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THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
A Critique on the Bases of Conduct and of Faith. 

I2D10, gilt top, $2.00. 

CALIFORNIA. In American Commonwealths Series. 
With Map. i6mo, gilt top, $1.25. 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
Boston and New York. 



ammcan Comtttotttoeattfju. 



EDITED BY 



HORACE E. SCUDDER. 







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American Commontoealtfjg 




CALIFORNIA 



FROM THE CONQUEST IN 1846 TO THE SECOND VIGILANCE 
COMMITTEE IN SAN FRANCISCO 



^ A STUDY OF AMEBIC AN CHARACTER 



BY 

JOSIAH ROYCE 

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OP PHILOSOPHY IN HARVARD COLLEGE 



Von Sonn' und Welten weiss ich Nichts zu sagen. 
Ich sehe nur, wie sich die Menschen plagen. 

Mephistopheles, in the Prologue to Faust. 



s 



V 



i 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

^ y 








Copyright, 1886, 
By JOSIAH ROYCE. 

All rights reserved. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge s 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Co. 



To 
MY MOTHER, 

A CALIFORNIA PIONEER OE 1849. 



By Twmsfar 



PREFACE. 



More elaborate and learned volumes than the present 
one have recently been devoted in large part to the his- 
tory of Spanish and Mexican California before 1846. 
This book is concerned, in the main, only with American 
California, and with that only during the early and ex- 
citing formative years, from 1846 to 1856. This his- 
tory of the beginnings of a great American common- 
wealth has seemed to the author sufficient and worthy 
to occupy the whole of such a volume as the present one, 
in view both of the interest of the events and of their 
value as illustrating American life and character. 

The purpose has been throughout to write from the 
sources. For the history of the conquest in 1846 offi- 
cial and private documents of original value have been 
used in so far as was possible, while, as the reader will 
at once see, the interregnum, the early mining life, and 
the history of San Francisco affairs have in general 
been described directly from such early newspapers as I 
have been able to read, the later testimony of pioneers 
and the views of subsequent historical writers being used 
here mainly to check, to complete, or to explain what 
the early newspapers tell us. As to the method of study 
employed, the social condition has been throughout of 
more interest to me than the individual men, and the 



yill PREFACE. 

men themselves of more interest than their fortunes, 
while the purpose to study the national character has 
never been lost sight of in the midst of even the most 
minute examination of certain obscure events. Nor has 
a certain unity in the whole narrative been absent from 
my mind as I have written. Through all the complex 
facts that are here set down in their somewhat confused 
order, I have felt running the one thread of the process 
whereby a new and great community first came to a true 
consciousness of itself. The story begins with the seem- 
ingly accidental doings of detached but in the sequel 
vastly influential individuals, and ends just where the 
individual ceases to have any very great historical signif- 
icance for California life, and where the community 
begins to be what it ought to be, viz., all important as 
against individual doings and interests. 

As to the originality of the various parts of this book, 
the later chapters are written with relatively the most 
complete independence of fellow-workers. In the first 
and second chapters, and in part in the third chapter, I 
have, on the other hand, to make my most important 
acknowledgments for help received. To Mr. Hubert 
Howe Bancroft I owe the very great privilege of a free 
use of his immense collection of original documents on 
the early history, especially of the conquest, — a privilege 
of which I took advantage during the whole of the sum- 
mer vacation of 1884. And from both Mr. Bancroft 
and his able collaborators I received, during all this time, 
frequent and most friendly oral advice about the use of 
the collection itself. As Mr. Bancroft's library contains 
the material for his own great work, now in process of 
publication, on the history of the Pacific States of North 
America, I feel especially indebted to the generosity 



PREFACE. ix 

which so freely placed this original material at my dis- 
posal in advance of the publication of the results otained 
by Mr. Bancroft and his collaborators themselves. 
Where I have referred to these original documents, I 
have used in my notes the abbreviation B. MS. as a gen- 
eral name for all of them. My own freedom of judg- 
ment I have, of course, sought to retain throughout, al- 
though I am much indebted, for the formation of many 
of my opinions and arguments, to the suggestions gained 
through conversation and correspondence with Mr. Ban- 
croft and his collaborators concerning some such dis- 
puted points as the Gillespie mission of 1845-46, the 
English designs on California, and other matters of 
conquest history. But the results that I have here writ- 
ten down are, as they stand, always my own final 
judgment upon all the evidence that I could obtain. 
Where they are mistaken, I therefore am alone to blame, 
and not Mr. Bancroft's documents. Much of the evi- 
dence presented has been, moreover, in every case the 
result of my own independent research, carried on in 
Eastern libraries ; and in so far I have been absolutely 
my own guide. Of the able and exhaustive volumes 
that have already appeared in Mr. Bancroft's series on 
the history of California, I have freely used in my pre- 
liminary sketch the portions that deal with colonial Cali- 
fornia down to 1840. Beyond this I have had no access 
to Mr. Bancroft's book, and anticipate, of course, cor- 
rection of some of my facts and opinions when that most 
elaborate investigation shall appear. I feel it greatly to 
my disadvantage, in fact, to publish my own volume in 
advance of so well-equipped and important a research as 
the work of Mr. Bancroft and his collaborators is sure 
to prove. I regret to have been unable to make any 



X PREFACE. 

use whatever of the just issued History of California by 
Mr. Theodore H. Hittell, which appeared too late to 
help me. 

Among general libraries, I owe most to the library of 
Harvard College. The librarian, Mr. Winsor, has in 
particular constantly and very patiently aided me with 
suggestions and criticisms, and the library authorities 
have kindly provided, during the course of the work, for 
the purchase of much material without which the book, 
especially in the later chapters, would have been almost 
impossible. The American Antiquarian Society at 
Worcester, the Massachusetts State Library in Boston, 
the Boston Athenaeum Library, the Mercantile Library 
of San Francisco, and the Library of the California 
Pioneers have all generously answered my various re- 
quests for permission to use material in their possession, 
and to most of them I also owe much for free oppor- 
tunities to search in their collections after material not 
previously known or catalogued. 

I have further to acknowledge the courtesy of the 
present Secretary of State, in giving me the use of im- 
portant official documents in the Department archives 
at Washington ; and also the kindness of the present 
Secretaries of War and of the Navy, as shown by their 
prompt and explicit answers to my questions concerning 
historical documents in their possession. Mr. R. S. 
Watson of Milton, Mass., and Mr. E. S. Osgood of Cam- 
bridge, have very kindly helped me with their valu- 
able reminiscences of vigilance committee times. Mr. 
T. G. Carey of Cambridge has put at my disposal im- 
portant MS. material of his own. Pres. D. C Gilman 
of Baltimore, Mr. Arthur Rogers of San Francisco, and 
Mr. William Carey Jones of Berkeley, Cah, have also 



PREFACE. XI 

supplied me with advice and with valuable printed mat- 
ter. My obligations to the patience and courtesy of 
General and Mrs. Fremont for the free use of their time 
in discussing matters connected with the conquest in 
1846 will, I hope, appear amidst all the very plain criti- 
cism of General Fremont's views and conduct to which 
I have found myself driven by indubitable historical 
evidence. To Mr. Charles Shinn, finally, I am indebted 
for the gift of advance sheets of his book on " Mining 
Camps," whereby I was much furthered in my work on 
that subject. 

A word in conclusion as to the limitations of this book. 
For the sake of preserving as far as possible the unity of 
the story, I have had to omit almost all reference to 
such matters as, belonging to the history of California 
before 1856, still became of importance only in view of 
the events of later years. Such matters are the begin- 
nings of literary activity in the San Francisco com- 
munity in 1854, the first movements towards establish- 
ing university education in the State, or, again, the first 
phases of the long and exciting Chinese agitation. Even 
in speaking of the partisan political life, I have had to 
pass over, with a mere mention, events and persons that 
in a history of the next ten years would become so im- 
portant as to make them seem, by reflected light, much 
more significant even before 1856 than I have had room 
to cause them to appear. I trust that these defects will 
be pardoned by a generous reader, who may also find 
my doubtless too numerous mistakes of detail not alto- 
gether inexcusable in a book that deals with so complex, 
exciting, and ill-recorded a period as this, and that is 
written, after all, by a student whose professional busi- 
ness is one not commonly regarded as duly conversant 



xii PREFACE. 

with this actual world of picks, pans, cradles, and vigi- 
lance committees. What I could do in a labor of love 
I have done, both to attain accuracy of detail and to 
make clear the meaning of a truly wonderful historical 
process. 

Cambridge, Mass., March 9, 1886. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

Introduction : The Territory and the Strangers . 1 

I. The Land 3 

II. Outlines of Older California History .... 8 

III. The Californian People 30 

IV. The Americans in California before the Conquest . . 34 

CHAPTER II. 

The American as Conqueror: The Secret Mission and 

the Bear Flag 48 

I. The Confidential Agent, and the Beginnings of War . 50 

II. The Bear-Flag Heroes 60 

III. Sloat, the Administration, and the Mystery of the Secret 

Mission 84 

IV. The Mystery as formerly expounded by Captain Fre- 

mont's Friends 87 

V. Californian Hostility as a Cause for War ... 93 

VI. The Mystery as now expounded by General Fremont . Ill 

VII. The Mystery deepens 123 

VIII. Only one Dispatch contains the Secret Mission . . . 129 

IX. The Mystery as expounded by the one Dispatch . . 133 

X. Supplementary Evidence and Summary .... 141 

CHAPTER III. 

The Conquest completed, the Interregnum, and the 

Birth of the State 151 

I. The Conquerors and their Consciences .... 152 

II. Sloat, the Larkin Intrigue, and the English Legend . 157 

III. The Wolf and the Lamb 174 



XIV 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

IY. The Revolt and the Re-conquest 184 

V. The Conquerors as Rulers and as Subjects; Quarrels, 

Discontent, and Aspirations . 198 

VI. The Beginnings of the American San Francisco . ' . 213 

VII. Gold, New-Comers, and Illusions 220 

VIII. The Ways to the New Land 234 

IX. The Struggle for a Constitution . .... 246 

X. The Constitutional Convention and its Outcome . . 259 

CHAPTER IV. 

The Struggle for Order: Self-Government, Good-Hu- 
mor and Violence in the Mines .... 271 
I. The Philosophy of California History during the Golden 

Days 272 

II. The Evolution of Disorder 278 

III. Pan and Cradle as Social Agents : Mining Society in the 

Summer of 1848 .282 

IV. Mining Society in 1849 and 1850, and the Beginning of 

Sluice-Mining 301 

V. The Spirit of the Miners' Justice of 1851 and 1852 ; the 

Miners on theii own Law 313 

VI. Miners' Justice in Action. — Characteristic Scenes and 

Incidents 325 

VII. A Typical History of a Miniag Camp in 1851-52 . . 344 

VIII. The Warfare against the Foreigners .... 356 
IX. The Downieville Lynching of July 5, 1851 . . • 368 

X. The Attainment of Order 374 



CHAPTER V. 

Social Evolution in San Francisco . 
I. The New City and the Great Fires 
II. The Moral Insanities of the Golden Days . 

III. Conservatism, Churches, and Families . 

IV. Popular Justice in February, 1851 . 
V. The First Vigilance Committee 

VI. Social Corruption and Commercial Disaster 
VII. The New Awakening of Conscience 
VIII. The Crisis of May, 1856 .... 
IX. Popular Vengeance and the New Movement . 
X. Perils and Triumphs of the Great Committee 



377 
378 
391 
398 
407 
417 
422 
432 
437 
448 
453 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. XV 
CHAPTER VI. 

PAGE 

Land-Titles and Politics 466 

I. Early Land Troubles 467 

II. The Native Population and the Later Struggle for their 

Laud 480 

III. Early Political Conflicts 491 

IV. Conclusion 



CALIFOKJSTIA. 



CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTION : THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 

This book is meant to help the reader towards an un- 
derstanding of two things : namely, the modern Ameri- 
can State of California, and our national character as 
displayed in that land. 

For both purposes the period of California history 
between 1846 and 1856, between the beginnings of our 
national occupation of the territory and the close of the 
Second Vigilance Committee of San Francisco, is espe- 
cially instructive. This is the period of excitement, of 
trial, and of rapid transformation. Everything that has 
since happened in California, or that ever will happen *, 
there, so long as men dwell in the land, must be deeply 
affected by the forces of local life and society that then 
took their origin. And, for the understanding of our 
American national character in some of its most signif- 
icant qualities, this life of surprises and of searching 
moral ordeals has a still too little appreciated value. 

The American community in early California fairly 
represented, as we shall see, the average national culture 
and character. But no other part of our land was ever 
so rapidly peopled as was California in the first golden 



2 CALIFORNIA. 

days. Nowhere else were we Americans more affected 
than here, in our lives and conduct, by the feeling that 
we stood in the position of conquerors in a new land. 
Nowhere else, again, were we ever before so long forced 
by circumstances to live at the mercy of a very wayward 
chance, and to give to even our most legitimate business 
a dangerously speculative character. Nowhere else were 
we driven so hastily to improvise a government for a 
large body of strangers ; and nowhere else did fortune 
so nearly deprive us for a little time of our natural de- 
votion to the duties of citizenship. We Americans 
therefore showed, in early California, new failings and 
new strength. We exhibited a novel degree of careless- 
ness and overhastiness, an extravagant trust in luck, a 
previously unknown blindness to our social duties, and 
an indifference to the rights of foreigners, whereof we 
cannot be proud. But we also showed our best national 
traits, — traits that went far to atone for our faults. As 
a body, our pioneer community in California was per- 
sistently cheerful, energetic, courageous, and teachable. 
In a few years it had repented of its graver faults, it 
had endured with charming good humor their severest 
penalties, and it was ready to begin with fresh devotion 
the work whose true importance it had now at length 
learned — the work of building a well-organized, perma- 
nent, and progressive State on the Pacific Coast. In 
this work it has been engaged ever since, with fortunes 
that always, amid the most remarkable changes, have 
preserved a curious likeness to the fortunes of the early 
days, and that, in numerous and recent instances, have 
led to a more or less noteworthy and complete repetition 
of certain early trials, blunders, sins, penalties, virtues, 
and triumphs. 



THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 3 

This introductory chapter will aim to supply the chief 
facts necessary for an understanding of the ten years of 
busy life whose social aspects we are hereafter to ex- 
amine. In the later chapters we shall endeavor to dwell 
with especial detail upon such facts, external, social, or 
individual, as illustrate and explain the history of Amer- 
ican civilization in the State of California. 

I. THE LAND. 

The general topographical outlines of California are 
shown at once by the map. If one excludes the earliest 
settled and now very richly productive coast region 
south of Santa Barbara, the barren interior regions of 
San Bernardino County, and of the adjoining terri- 
tory to the southward, the other barren strip of land in 
Mono and Inyo counties, east of the Sierras and south 
of Mono Lake, and, finally, the great mountainous coast 
and interior lands of the extreme north, one has still 
left the main body of the State : namely, the central 
Coast Range, the great valley of the two rivers (the' 
Sacramento and San Joaquin), and the main chain of 
the Sierra Nevada Mountains. This chief and central 
portion of the State shows to the Pacific Ocean a gener- 
ally bold and rugged coast-line, with successive ranges 
of hills, nearly parallel to the coast, rising in some places 
to the height of three or four thousand feet. North of 
the latitude of Monterey, this coast is often daily ob- 
scured in summer by cold and persistent fogs, which, 
climbing the Coast Range, or projecting in long gray 
tongues through the gaps of the range, finally disappear, 
as one goes inward, in the dry and cloudless summer air 
of the great interior valley. In this level and fertile val- 
ley the two rivers — the one rising far to the north, near 



4 CALIFORNIA. 

Mount Shasta, the other in the Sierras of Fresno County 
— flow through their opposing courses, and, meeting at 
last, discharge their waters by the two intermediate bays 
into the main body of the great San Francisco Bay, and 
so, through the Golden Gate, into the ocean. The two 
rivers, as they flow, receive from numerous tributaries 
the waters of the Sierra Nevada range, which bounds 
the great valley on the east. The mountains of this 
range rise very gradually, at first in gently sloping and 
irregularly disposed lines of foot-hills, to the rugged 
and snowy highest ridges, which vary in elevation from 
nine or ten thousand to twelve or even fourteen thou- 
sand feet above sea level. Through the foot-hills the 
westward-flowing rivers have worn vast deep canons, 
whose scenery has a character peculiar to this range. 
East of the summit, there is a rapid descent, through 
steep and glacier-worn, but now often nearly dry and 
always very wild gorges, to the broken plateaus of the 
desert region. Not a drop of the water that flows down 
this eastern slope of the great chain reaches the sea, all 
being lost in " sinks," or in salt lakes. The largest of the 
eastward-flowing rivers are but great mountain torrents. 
The great central valley and mountain region of 
California, thus roughly outlined, is a country full of 
tell-tale landscapes, that show at a glance to the trav- 
eler the general topographical structure of the whole 
land. In the gently mountainous regions of even the 
more rugged of our Eastern States, one may wander for 
many days, and see many picturesque or imposing land- 
scapes, without getting any clear notion of the complex 
water system of the country through which he journeys. 
In most such hilly regions, if he climbs to some prom- 
ising summit, hoping to command therefrom a general 



THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 6 

view of the land about him, he often sees in the end 
nothing hut a collection of gracefully curving hills sim- 
ilar to the one that he has chosen. Winding valleys 
divide these hills with their endlessly complex and often- 
broken lines. He gets no sense of the ground plan of 
the region. It seems a mass of hills, and that is all. 
Painfully, with the aid of his map, he identifies this or 
that landmark, and so at last comprehends his sur- 
roundings, which, after all, he never really sees. But, 
in the typical central Californian landscape, as viewed 
from any commanding summit, the noble frankness of 
nature shows one at a glance the vast plan of the 
country. From hills only eighteen hundred or two 
thousand feet high, on the Contra Costa side of San 
Francisco Bay, you may on any clear day see, to the 
westward, the blue line of the ocean, the narrow Golden 
Gate, the bay itself at your feet, the rugged hills of 
Marin County beyond, and the smoky outlines of San 
Francisco south of the Gate ; you may follow with the 
eye, to the southward, the far-reaching lower arm of the 
great bay, and may easily find the distant range of 
the Santa Cruz Mountains ; while, to the eastward and 
northward, you may look over the vast plains of the 
interior valley, and dwell upon the great blue masses of 
the Sierra Nevada rising far beyond them, and culmi- 
nating in the snowy summits that all summer long 
would gleam across to you through the hot valley haze. 
From the Sierras themselves you might see the reverse 
of the picture. In the upper foot-hills, where I spent 
my childhood, we used to live in what seemed a very 
open country, with not many rugged hills near us, with 
the frowning higher mountains far to the eastward, 
and with a pleasant succession of grassy meadows and 



6 CALIFORNIA. 

of gentle wooded slopes close about us. But, just be- 
yond the western horizon that the darkly wooded hills 
bounded, there loomed up from a great distance two 
or three sharp-pointed summits that were always of 
a deep blue color. These we knew to belong to the 
Coast Range ; and the far-off ocean was, we fancied, 
rolling just at the western base of these peaks. If now 
we walked a mile or two to some higher hill-top, the 
whole immense river valley itself seemed, at the end of 
our walk, to flash of a sudden into existence before our 
eyes, with all its wealth of shining and winding streams, 
with the "Three Buttes," near Marysville, springing 
up like young giants from the midst of the plain, and 
with the beautiful, long, and endlessly varied blue line 
of the Coast Range bounding the noble scene on the 
west. Of course, what we could actually see of the 
great valley was but a very little part if compared to 
the whole ; but the system upon which this interior re- 
gion of the State was planned, we as children could not 
fail to comprehend both very early and very easily. 

The Coast Range is broken down at one point to give 
an entrance from the ocean through the Golden Gate 
into the Bay of San Francisco, upon the west shore of 
which, as we have just seen, lies San Francisco itself. 
North of the Gate the Coast Range forms a bolder and 
more rugged coast-line than is the case towards the 
south. Almost directly east of San Francisco rises be- 
yond the Contra Costa hills the blue summit of Monte 
Diablo, the most noteworthy landmark of the Coast 
Range for all the central portion of the State. From 
the summit of this peak, at an elevation of some 3,800 
feet, one can best of all view the portion of the State 
with which the early American life had most to do. 



THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 7 

The climate o£ California is too generally known now 
to need special description here. In the dry season, 
from June to September or October, there is a local 
climate close along the coast itself, from about the lati- 
tude of Santa Cruz northward, which, by reason of 
daily northwest winds and fogs, is as invigorating to all 
healthy people as it is disagreeable. One leaves San 
Francisco in summer, if at all, not to enjoy a cool hol- 
iday away from the city's oppressive heat, but to get 
into a warmer air. All the southern half of the State 
and all the interior valleys enjoy, during the dry sea- 
son, clear and hot days, with cool and very restful 
nights. The rainy season is everywhere somewhat te- 
dious, by reason of its two or three, or perchance more, 
very long and heavy southwest rain-storms ; but, in the 
intervals of these long rains, if, as commonly chances, 
no noticeable " cold wave " weather follows them (and 
so no example of the occasional bitter northers), then 
indeed one has the true chance to enjoy nature. Then 
one sees, perhaps in January or February, the clearest 
of skies, and feels the most perfect of airs. The new 
grass springs on every hill, the song-birds are count- 
less, and, by April and May, the vast fields of wild- 
flowers are in full bloom. But April and May are the 
spendthrift months of wealthy nature. A few golden 
weeks of absolute freedom from winds and rains, of 
warmth and of sunshine, give place at last to the long 
sleep of the dry season, rainless also, and, in the in- 
terior, as windless and as dreamy as the climate of 
Lotus Land. 

The first effect of the Californian climate is to im- 
prove the general health of nearly all new-comers, un- 
less, indeed, being afflicted with pulmonary troubles, 



8 CALIFORNIA. 

they should find the windy northern and central coast 
climate in the dry season too severe for them. Then, 
however, the interior valleys, or the southern coast, are 
still open to them, and are very healthful. But one 
secondary effect of the climate is indeed not so favor- 
able for any one, in that the comparative evenness of 
the successive seasons prompts active people to work too 
steadily, to skip their holidays, and, by reason of their 
very enjoyment of life, to wear out their constitutions 
with overwork. Here is a fact of considerable impor- 
tance for the understanding of California civilization. In 
early days, moreover, by reason of the utter carelessness 
of the mining population, fevers and dysentery were very 
prevalent in the Sacramento Valley and in the foot-hills 
of the Sierra. But people who so ate, drank, and lived 
as many of the miners chose to do, hardly deserve com- 
miseration for their well-earned diseases, even as the cli- 
mate deserves but little blame therefor. On the whole, 
save in these careless early years, the country has been 
remarkably free from epidemics. Of the great present 
material resources of the land there is no need to speak 
here. We deal with the men. 

II. OUTLINES OF OLDER CALIFORNIA HISTORY. 

The settlements of Spanish missionaries within the 
present limits of the State of California date from the 
first foundation of San Diego in 1769. The missions 
that were later founded north of San Diego were, with 
the original establishment itself, for a time known merely 
by some collective name, such as the Northern Missions. 1 
But later the name California, already long since ap- 
plied to the country of the peninsular missions to the 
1 H. H. Bancroft, History of California, vol. i. p. 67. 



THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 9 

southward, was extended to the new land, with various 
prefixes or qualifying phrases ; and out of these the de- 
finitive name Alta California at last came, being ap- 
plied to our present country during the whole period of 
the Mexican Republican ownership. As to the origin of 
the name California, no serious question remains that 
this name, as first applied, between 1535 and 1539, to 
a portion of Lower California, was derived from an old 
printed romance, the one which Mr. Edward Everett 
Hale rediscovered in 1862, and from which he drew 
this now accepted conclusion. For, in this romance, the 
name California was already before 1520 applied to a 
fabulous island, described as near the Indies and also 
" very near the Terrestrial Paradise." Colonists whom 
Cortes brought to the newly discovered peninsula in 
1535, and who returned the next year, may have been 
the first to apply the name to this supposed island, on 
which they had been for a time resident. 1 

The coast of Upper California was first visited during 
the voyage of the explorer Juan Cabrillo in 1542-43. 
Several landings were then made on the coast and on 
the islands, in the Santa Barbara region. Cabrillo 
himself died during the expedition (on January 3, 1543), 
and the voyage was continued by his successor, Ferralo, 
who sailed as far north as 42°. The whole undertaking 
resulted in some examination of the coast-line as far as 
Cape Mendocino, and in a glimpse of the native popu- 
lation that lived along the southern shores of the pres- 
ent State. 2 

In 1579 Drake's famous visit took place. During the 

1 H. H. Bancroft, vol. i. p. 66 ; E. E. Hale, Amer. Antiquarian 
Soc. Proceedings for 1862 ; Atlantic Monthly, vol. xiii. p. 265. 

2 Bancroft, vol. i. pp. 69-81. 



10 CALIFORNIA. 

latter half of June and nearly the whole of July, he 
remained in what " The World Encompassed " calls a 
" convenient and fit harbour " (about 38° 30'), where 
the ship was grounded for repairs, and where the expe- 
dition had considerable intercourse with the natives. 
One of the accounts complains, in extravagant fashion, 
of the chilly air and of the fogs of the region, and, in 
general, we get information from the accounts about 
the " white banks and cliffs, which lie toward the sea," 
and hear about what we now know as the Farallones, 
the rocky islets that lie just outside what we call the 
Golden Gate. While the other details of the stories, as 
given, are obviously in large part imaginary, there can 
be no doubt that Drake did land near this point on the 
coast, and did find a passable harbor, where he stayed 
some time. It is, however, almost perfectly sure that he 
did not enter or observe the Golden Gate, and that he 
got no sort of idea of the existence of the great Bay ; 
while for the rest, it is and must remain quite uncertain 
what anchorage he discovered, although the chances are 
in favor of what is now called Drake's Bay, under Point 
Reyes. This result of the examination of the evidence 
about Drake's voyage is now fairly well accepted, al- 
though some people will always try to insist that Drake 
discovered our Bay of San Francisco. 1 

The name San Francisco was probably applied to a 
port on this coast for the first time by Cermenon, who 
in a voyage from the Philippines in 1595 ran ashore, 
while exploring the coast near Point Reyes. It is now, 
however, perfectly sure that neither he nor any other 
Spanish navigator before 1769 applied this name to our 

1 On this voluminous controversy I pretend to no sort of independent 
opinion. See Bancroft, vol. i. pp. 81-94, for both result and references. 



THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 11 

present bay, which remained utterly unknown to Euro- 
peans during all this period. The name Port of San 
Francisco was given by Vizcaino, and by later naviga- 
tors and geographers, to the bay under Point Reyes, 
characterized by the whitish cliffs and by the rocky 
islets in the ocean in front of it. The coincidence of 
the name San Francisco with the name of Sir Francis 
Drake is remarkable, but doubtless means nothing. 
Christian names are, after all, limited in number ; and 
those who applied this name to the new port were 
Spaniards and Catholics, while Drake was a freebooter 
and an Englishman. 1 

In 1602-3, Sebastian Vizcaino conducted a Spanish 
exploring expedition along the California coast. He vis- 
ited San Diego and Monterey bays, saw during his 
various visits on shore a good deal of the natives, and in 
January, 1603, anchored in the old Port of San Fran- 
cisco, under Point Reyes. From this voyage a little 
more knowledge of the character of the coast was gained ; 
and thenceforth geographical researches in the region 
of California ceased for over a century and a half. 2 

With only this meagre result we reach the era of the 
first settlement of Upper California. The missions of 
the peninsula of Lower California passed, in 1767, by 
the expulsion of the Jesuits, into the hands of the Fran- 
ciscans ; and the Spanish government, whose attention 
was attracted in this direction by the changed conditions, 
ordered the immediate prosecution of a long-cherished 
plan to provide the Manila ships, on their return voy- 

1 See Bancroft, loc. cil., p. 97. 

2 Bancroft, loc. cit., p. 97. Vizcaino's voyage attracted much more 
general attention than the earlier explorations of Cabrillo had re- 
ceived. 



12 CALIFORNIA. 

age, with good ports of supply and repairs, and to oc- 
cupy the northwest land as a safeguard against Rus- 
sian or other aggressions. For the accomplishment of 
this end the occupation of the still but vaguely known 
harbors of San Diego and Monterey was planned. The 
zeal of the Franciscans for the conversion of the gen- 
tiles of the north seconded the official purposes, and 
in 1768 the Visitador General of New Spain, Jose de 
Galvez, took personal charge at La Paz of the prepara- 
tion of an expedition intended to begin the new settle- 
ments in the north. The official purpose here, as in older 
mission undertakings, was an union of physical and spir- 
itual conquest, soldiers under a military governor coop- 
erating: to this end with missionaries and mission es- 
tablishments. The natives were to be overcome by 
arms in so far as they might resist the conquerors, were 
to be attracted to the missions by peaceable measures in 
so far as might prove possible, were to be instructed 
in the faith, and were to be kept for the present 
under the paternal rule of the clergy, until such time 
as they might be ready for a free life as Christian 
subjects. Meanwhile, Spanish colonists were to be 
brought to the new land as circumstances might deter- 
mine, and, to these, allotments of land were in some 
fashion to be made. No grants of land in a legal sense 
were made or promised to the mission establishments, 
whose position was to be merely that of spiritual insti- 
tutions, intrusted temporarily with the education of 
neophytes, and with the care of the property that should 
be given or hereafter produced for this purpose. On 
the other hand, if the government tended to regard the 
missions as purely subsidiary to its purposes, the outgoing 
missionaries to this strange land were so much the more 



THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 13 

certain to be quite uncorrupted by worldly ambitions, 
by a hope of acquiring wealth, or by any intention to 
found a powerful ecclesiastical government in the new 
colony. They went to save souls, and their motive was 
as single as it was worthy of reverence. In the sequel 
the more successful missions in Upper California be- 
came, for a time, very wealthy ; but this was only by 
virtue of the gifts of nature and of the devoted labors 
of the padres. 

In January of 1769, the first of four expeditions, all 
intended for San Diego harbor, set sail. Of the four 
expeditions, two were to go by land, and two by sea ; 
the last land expedition including Governor Portola, 
and the famous head of the missionaries, Father Juni- 
pero Serra. The water expeditions suffered seriously 
from scurvy. About eighty Spanish friars and soldiers 
were at last united at San Diego, the first ship arriving 
April 11, 1769, and the first mission being founded, 
after the arrival of all four parties, on the 16th of 
July. An expedition which set out forthwith overland 
under Portola, to explore the northern coast, and to find 
the harbor of Monterey, actually passed the real port, 
without recognizing it, in the beginning of October. 
They marched still northward along the coast, until, on 
October 31st, they came, in sight of the Farallones, and 
of Point Reyes, which they saw from a place near the 
present Point San Pedro, on the southern part of the 
ocean coast of the San Francisco peninsula. Still, of 
course, ignorant of the existence of our present Bay, 
they were not ignorant of the existence and current de- 
scription of the old port of San Francisco, with its cliffs 
and its little islands ; and they at once recognized the 
place. A detachment was sent forward to reach this 



14 CALIFORNIA. 

port at Point Reyes, and during the absence of this de- 
tachment, some of the soldiers of the main party, while 
hunting, climbed the hills and first saw the great Bay 
itself. The detachment soon returned, having been 
unable to pass the Golden Gate. After some days of 
further wandering on the peninsula, the expedition re- 
turned towards Monterey. 1 

Thus began the career of Spanish discovery and set- 
tlement in California. The early years show a generally 
rapid progress, only one great disaster occurring, — the 
destruction of San Diego Mission in 1775, by assailing 
Indians. But this loss was quickly repaired. In 1770 
the Mission of San Carlos was founded at Monterey. 
In 1772, a land expedition, under Fages and Crespi, 
first explored the eastern shore of our San Francisco 
Bay, in an effort to reach by land the old Port of San 
Francisco. This expedition discovered the San Joaquin 
River, and, unable to cross it, returned without attaining 
the object of the exploration. After 1775 the old name 
began to be generally applied to the new Bay, and so, 
thenceforth, the name Port of San Francisco* means 
what we now mean thereby. In 1775 Lieutenant 
Ayala entered the new harbor by water. In the follow- 
ing year the Mission at San Francisco was founded, and 
in October its church was dedicated. 

Not only missions, however, but pueblos, inhabited 
by Spanish colonists, lay in the official plan of the new 
undertakings. The first of these to be established was 
San Jose, founded in November, 1777. The next was 
Los Angeles, founded in September, 1781. The pueblos 

1 For the account in full of this discovery of our San Francisco 
Bay, collated from the sources, whereof the principal is Father 
Crespi' s diary of this expedition, see chap. vi. of Bancroft's vol. i. 



THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 15 

were intended, among other things, to supply the new 
missions with the needed grain ; but for a good while 
they were not very jjrosperous. 

The missions, on the other hand, had an organization 
and a devout earnestness of superintendence that secured 
their swift progress. -They multiplied quickly in num- 
ber, nine existing already in 1787 within the limits of 
California. In 1780, the sixteen missionary priests then 
present in the land were the spiritual rulers of some 
three thousand native converts. By the end of the cen- 
tury there were eighteen missions, with forty pad?*es, 
and with a neophyte population of 13,500. Crops of 
from 30,000 to 75,000 bushels per year were by this 
time produced in the territory ; and there were 70,000 
horses and cattle, while the mission buildings and other 
properties were together valued at about a million 
pesos. 1 Such, then, was the material progress of the 
missionary work. The personal enthusiasm of Father 
Junipero, who from 1769 until his death in 1784 was 
at the head of mission affairs, has earned for him since 
a great popular reputation for ability and saintliness, 
a reputation made permanent by the biography that 
came from the pen of his friend Palou. And about 
Serra's hio-h worth as a man and a Christian there is 
indeed no controversy among those who know his 
career. As to the value of these mission methods them- 
selves opinions will no doubt always differ, although the 
matter seems to me a fairly plain one. The charges 
of systematic cruelty brought against the fathers were, 
to be sure, founded on a very superficial knowledge of 

1 See the brief summary in Bancroft's North Mexican States, 
vol. i. p. 749, as well as the fuller statements in vol. i. of the 
California. 



16 CALIFORNIA. 

their work. But these charges are not the real ones 
to be made against their efficiency. They had a poor 
understanding of sanitary precautions, and it was partly 
because of this that the death-rate at their missions was 
always very high. Their method of training, moreover 
(and this is the main consideration) , did not really civ- 
ilize their converts, but only made these hopelessly de- 
pendent upon them. The final outcome of their work, 
therefore, as we must conclude, was, for the cause of 
true spiritual progress in California, simply nothing ; for, 
with their power, nearly every trace of their labors 
vanished from the world. But no one can question 
their motives ; nor may one doubt that their intentions 
were not only formally pious, but truly humane. For 
the more fatal diseases that so-called civilization intro- 
duced among these Indians only the soldiers and col- 
onists of the presidios and pueblos were to blame ; and 
the fathers, well knowing the evil results of a mixed 
population, did their best to prevent these consequences, 
but in vain, since the neighborhood of a presidio was 
frequently necessary for the safety of a mission, and 
the introduction of white colonists was an important 
part of the intentions of the home government. But, 
after all, upon this whole toil of the missions, considered 
in itself, one looks back with respectful regret, as upon 
one of the most devout and praiseworthy of mortal 
efforts, and, in view of its avowed intentions, one of the 
most complete and fruitless of human failures. The 
missions have meant, for modern American California, 
little more than a memory, which now indeed is light- 
ened up by poetical legends of many sorts. But the 
chief significance of the missions is simply that they first 
began the colonization of California. 



TEE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 17 

Although commercial intercourse with foreigners was 
forbidden in the land, still, towards the close of the old 
century and the opening of the new, one finds some for- 
eign attention attracted to California. The first foreign 
visitor had been the Frenchman, La Perouse, in 1786. 
In 1792 Vancouver had visited the coast. In 1796 the 
first American ship, the Otter, of Boston, had appeared 
at Monterey, and had obtained wood and water for 
her voyage. Both La Perouse and Vancouver had de- 
scribed the land and the missions, the latter with some 
animadversions on the defenseless state of the country, 
and with expressions of surprise that so very small a 
force of soldiers could keep in awe so many thousands 
of natives. In 1806 the first Russian ship came to the 
port of San Francisco, from Sitka, under the direction 
of Rezanof, an official of high position, who had gone 
to Sitka as inspector of the establishments there. His 
purpose at the moment was to purchase supplies for the 
now nearly starving colony at Sitka. Although such 
transactions with foreigners were forbidden to the Cal- 
ifornians, still, after long and vain negotiations with 
Governor Arrillaga, and with the commandant of the 
presidio, Arguello, Rezanof at last gained his commer- 
cial purpose by dint of making successful love to the 
beautiful daughter of Arguello, the Dona Concepcion 
of the well-known and highly romantic tale that has 
since grown up out of this incident. Rezanof was 
actually betrothed, in the end, to the fair young daugh- 
ter ; and when he set out, with his purchases made, it 
was under the solemn promise to return and marry his 
new beloved as soon as possible. He died, however, 
while on the way across Siberia, during his return to 
St. Petersburg. The story, told in several versions, 
2 



18 CALIFORNIA. 

and immortalized in Mr. Bret Harte's best poem, has 
won many tears. Rezanof himself describes the affair, 
in his reports, as a purely business-like stroke of diplo- 
macy, whereby he gained the decisive official help of 
the Argiiello family. Whether he was sincere in his 
love or not, Dona Concepcion undoubtedly was in hers. 
She died, as nun, at Benicia, in 1857. x 

This first Russian visit was followed, in 1812, by the 
founding of a Russian colony under the auspices of the 
Fur Company at " Ross," as the new-comers named 
their own settlement, which was on the coast, about 
eighteen miles above Bodega Bay, and a little north of 
the mouth of Russian River. Here the company built 
a fort, negotiated and traded with the natives, secured 
from the latter what the Russians later affected to 
consider a title to the land, and remained in the place 
for some thirty years, until 1841. The colony was 
especially useful as a trading and supply station for 
the Fur Company. Its inhabitants numbered, as time 
went on, from 150 to 400, of mixed Russian, Aleutian, 
and, later, California Indian blood ; the force was al- 
ways under the control of military officers, and was 
kept in strict discipline. Notwithstanding the numer- 
ous official obstacles in their way, the Russians managed 
to get a good deal of grain and provisions, by trade, 
from the Spaniards, and, later, raised some grain them- 
selves. These supplies were sent to various Russian 
northern stations. But in the end the settlement 
proved a failure for its purposes, and was abandoned. 
A colony, in the strict sense, this establishment never 
became, and such plans of territorial acquisition as origi- 

1 The complete account from the sources is in Bancroft, vol. ii. 
pp. 64, sqq. 



THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 19 

nally had to do with its foundation were never devel- 
oped to any noteworthy result. 1 The establishment 
excited, from the first, just indignation and considerable 
apprehension on the part of the Spanish authorities, and, 
later, of the Mexican authorities ; but there was never 
an open collision. 

With the political events of the Spanish rule, and 
with the life of the missions during their remaining 
years of prosperity in the early part of our century, we 
have no further need to deal. The situation of the 
whole country was of course much altered when the in- 
dependence of Mexico was proclaimed in California, at 
the beginning of 1822. There was, indeed, no active 
resistance thought of. In March arrived the news of 
the success of Iturbide's imperial regency. On the 9th 
of April a junta met at Monterey, composed of the last 
Spanish governor, Sola, and of the principal officers 
present in the territory. This body passed resolutions 
of acquiescence in the new government, and took the 
prescribed oath. 2 A commissioner, sent from Mexico 
to see that the new order of things was properly intro- 
duced into California, brought into existence the first 
provincial diputacion or legislature, in November of that 
year. This body was called upon by the commissioner 
to elect a governor, and in November chose Don Luis 
Arguello as the first of the series of Mexican govern- 
ors. 

The history of California under Mexican rule falls 
into two unequal periods : the one of comparative quiet, 
extending to 1831, the second being characterized by 

1 See in particular, on the life and industries of this settlement, 
Bancroft, vol. ii. pp. 629, sqq. 

2 Bancroft, vol. ii. p. 451. 



20 CALIFORNIA. 

the rapid growth of a local Californian patriotism and 
by political feuds. Throughout both these periods the 
little province had to a great extent the management of 
its own affairs, and its subjection to Mexico proved at 
most times and in most respects a very imperfect sub- 
jection. Foreign trade was now permitted, under rather 
harassing restrictions, of which the most significant was 
an enormously high tariff. The population grew some- 
what slowly. Mr. Bancroft's list of inhabitants, at the 
close of the first volume of his "California," includes 
some 1,700 names of male settlers, soldiers, etc., of 
Spanish blood, who are actually on record as having 
lived in the province at some time between 1769 and 
1800. The recorded and estimated aggregate white 
population was, in the year 1790, 990 ; in the year 
1800, 1,800 ; and in the year 1810, 2,130. 1 Under the 
Mexican rule, the white population had increased by 
1830 to 4,250 ; and by 1840 to 5,780. Between this 
period and the conquest, as I suppose, the white popula- 
tion may have been further increased by some 1,500 or 
2,000 souls. It was popularly estimated at the moment 
as somewhere between 8,000 and 12,000 in 1846. 

As for the general course of events during the Mexi- 
can period, one has first to note the very early change 
from the imperial to the republican form of government 
in Mexico, — a change which the friars in California 
regarded with great displeasure and foreboding, 2 and 
which they opposed by word of mouth to an extent to 
which they had not opposed the change from Spanish 
sovereignty that was introduced by the imperial re- 
gency. Their leaders refused, in 1825, to take the pre- 

1 Bancroft, vol ii. p. 158. 

2 Bancroft, vol. ii. p. 517 ; vol. iii. pp. 16, sqq. 



THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 21 

scribed oath to the republic, and caused thereby some 
trouble to the civil authorities ; but the only effect was 
slightly to increase the difficulties of local government, 
and, in the sequel, to widen the breach between the old 
clerical order of things and the new order that must 
inevitably spring up under Mexican dominion. From 
1826 to 1830 the province quietly and gradually grew 
" toward the Mexican ideal of republicanism and the 
secularization of the missions," to quote Mr. Bancroft's 
words. 1 The governor first sent, in the Mexican repub- 
lican interest, to take charge of California was Echean- 
dia, who came in October, 1825 ; but the home gov- 
ernment undertook little further, in those years, for the 
good of California, unless sending a few convicts to the 
land, in February, 1830, be considered such an under- 
taking. In 1829 a revolt of some unpaid soldiers at 
Monterey, assisted by some native Californians, under- 
took to put the country into native Californian hands, 
while professing, for form's sake, firm allegiance to the 
central Mexican government, and alleging, as justifica- 
tion of the rising, abuse of authority on the part of 
Echeandia, whose headquarters were in the south. The 
leader of the revolt was a convict ranchero, Solis by 
name; but the movement gained no foothold in the 
south, and, after a bloodless pretense at a conflict near 
Santa Barbara, the rebels under Solis fled back again 
northwards to Monterey, only to find that town al- 
ready turned against them. The movement now, of 
course, entirely collapsed, and Echeandia remained for 
the time in undisputed power. His work as governor 
was partly devoted to the beginnings of the Mexican 

1 Vol. iii. p. 31. On Governor Echeandfa's career in California, see 
chaps, ii.-vi. of the same volume. 



22 CALIFORNIA. 

plan for the secularization of the missions of California. 
The original intention of Spain had been, as we know, 
to use the missions as stepping-stones, over which to 
pass to the true civilization of the new land. The en- 
tire failure of the missions effectively to civilize their 
neophytes or to prepare them for citizenship could not 
prevent, in republican Mexico, the effort to bring to an 
end the experiment that had failed so completely. In 
1826 Echeandia issued a decree for the partial emanci- 
pation of the neophytes of San Diego, Santa Barbara, 
and Monterey, — a decree whereby he freed them to 
some extent from the authority of the friars ; and in 
1830 he brought before the California legislative body a 
secularization plan, providing for the gradual transfor- 
mation of the missions into pueblos, and for giving each 
neophyte a share of property. The plan was approved 
by the legislature, and then forwarded to the supreme 
government for confirmation before it should be put into 
operation. 

But in 1830 Echeandia was succeeded by Manuel 
Victoria, who had for some time been military com- 
mandant in Lower California, and who was appointed 
in March, and arrived in December to assume the gov- 
ernorship of Alta California. There was some willful 
delay in the transfer of the office, and Victoria received 
the command in January, 1831, just after his predeces- 
sor had rather hastily and vainly attempted to put into 
immediate effect his own plan of secularization before 
retiring. Victoria was welcomed by the friars as an 
opponent of secularization ; but his rule, conducted after 
the fashion of a soldier, was with the non-clerical Cali- 
fornians unpopular, and was brief. He did not con- 
vene the legislature, he seemed throughout arbitrary, 



THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 23 

and in criminal matters he sometimes transgressed his 
legal authority. Thus dissatisfaction grew general, both 
in the north and in the south, and quickly culminated 
in a successful revolt. Victoria was wounded in a 
fight with the insurgents near Los Angeles, — a fight in 
which but two men in all were killed ; and, deserted by 
his followers, the fallen governor consented to accept 
a chance to return to Mexico from California, in De- 
cember, 1831. 1 

An interregnum followed, during 1832, with many 
domestic quarrels over the governorship in the early 
part of that year ; but these were brought to an end by 
the expectation of a new governor from Mexico. This 
new governor proved to be Jose Figueroa, an able man 
and a good official, whose services in California, coupled 
as they were with an engaging personal behavior, gained 
for him in the end the admiration of all the Californi- 
ans. His administration was interrupted by the vexa- 
tious and abortive Mexican colonization scheme that the 
Hijar and Padres party were commissioned to carry 
out, in 1834, under official sanction. Part of the lead- 
er's (Hijar's) commission having been countermanded 
by fresh orders from Mexico, which came to hand after 
the arrival of the colony in California, a quarrel sprang 
up between the governor and Hijar as to matters 
both of policy and of authority, — a quarrel which led to 
some rather serious difficulties. The whole colonization 
scheme finally came to an end in 1835, although it had 
by that time been the means of adding some two hun- 
dred to the population of California. As for seculariza- 
tion, that approached slowly and surely under Figueroa's 
administration, although he himself was too moderate to 

1 On Victoria's career, see Bancroft, vol. iii. ch. vii. 



24 CALIFORNIA. 

aim for the moment at more than a gradual emancipa- 
tion of the neophytes. But the same influences that had 
led to the colonization scheme had acted in Mexico to 
cause immediate secularization to be ordered, in a de- 
cree of the Mexican Congress of August 17, 1833 ; and 
Hijar, with his colony, in 1834, prepared to take part 
in the execution of this decree. The failure of Hijar's 
plans did not prevent the secularization decree from hav- 
ing a certain effect. The padres began, at certain mis- 
sions, to slaughter the mission cattle, and to sell their 
produce as rapidly as possible. They also neglected 
their unsalable properties very considerably, and, in the 
mean while, the number of neophytes present at the mis- 
sions began to show a rapid decrease. Figueroa died 
in September, 1835. 1 

With Figueroa's death begins a time of extremely 
complex political intrigue and conflict in California. 
The jealousy that Calif ornians now more and more felt 
against all Mexican interference was henceforth joined 
with a rapidly growing jealousy between the northern 
and southern parts of the territory of California itself, 
to the disturbance of all political relations. Figueroa, at 
his death, left the governorship to Jose Castro, and the 
military commandancy to the ranking officer of the ter- 
ritory, Guteirrez. The former gave over his civil office 
to Gutierrez in January, 1836 ; and the latter ruled for 
four quiet months, until the coming of Mariano Chico, 
who had been appointed by the central government to 
succeed Figueroa. Chico was the best hated, and, as to 
personal reputation, the most unfortunate of all the Mex- 
ican governors in California, although his rule was very 

1 See, for the events of his career, Bancroft, vol. ii. chaps, ix.- 
xii. pp. 240, sqq. 



THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 25 

brief. He had to encounter the growing jealousy afore- 
said, and his personal bearing was such as to inflame 
rather than to conciliate it, insomuch that the Californi- 
ans joined thenceforth in circulating exaggerated stories 
against him, 1 denouncing him as "tyrant, rascal, and 
fool." Furious personal quarrels, threatened rebellion, 
and lack of support from the central government forced 
him to retire in July of the same year ; and Gutierrez 
was once more left at the head of affairs. But the 
jealousy of everything Mexican was still growing. The 
mass of the Californians, although of the republican 
party, had found that Mexican republicanism brought 
no good to the land ; while the padres, looking back re- 
gretfully to the old Spanish days, used their influence 
also to bring Mexican authority into discredit. The 
better Californian families felt themselves superior in 
blood to the most of the Mexicans ; and the foreigners 
present in the land, numerous enough at this time to be 
influential, were equally opposed to Mexico. 2 The re- 
sult of all this was the Alvarado revolution, in Novem- 
ber, 1836. With a force that included some American 
hunters and some foreign sailors, the revolutionists got 
possession of Monterey, and sent Gutierrez to Mexico; 
all of which was accomplished, after the Californian 
fashion of civil warfare, without the shedding of blood, 
and by the mere show of force. The country was de- 
clared a sovereign state, which was thenceforth to have, 
if possible, only a federal union with Mexico ; the legis- 
lature elected Alvarado governor ad interim, and the 
new administration began with seemingly good pros- 

1 Bancroft, vol. iii. p. 427. 

2 This summary of the situation is founded on Bancroft's, in vol. 
iii. p. 449. 



26 CALIFORNIA. 

pects. But the south, the Los Angeles and San Diego 
country, was still to be conciliated, before California 
could be united in the new movement. 1 Though the 
Mexican flag still waved at Monterey, the reports car- 
ried to the south attributed to the revolutionists extrav- 
agant designs, such as the defiance of Mexico, the de- 
livery of the province into American hands, and the 
subversion of the Catholic faith. 2 A patriotic reaction 
was therefore threatened from Los Angeles, and Alva- 
rado had to go south with a force, to meet in person the 
influences arrayed against him. He was successful in 
winning general support at Santa Barbara, and he en- 
tered Los Angeles itself, without serious resistance, in 
January, 1837. Further complications ensued; but in 
May the political success of Alvarado's cause in the 
south seemed already complete, and, in a proclamation, 
the new governor declared the country free and united, 
although he never gave up the union with Mexico. 
But such complete practical freedom as he had thus far 
planned was indeed to be given up ; for in June, 1837, 
Andres Castillero arrived as Mexican commissioner to 
California. He at first joined the opponents of Alva- 
rado at San Diego, and, with an armed force of southern- 
ers, under the leadership of partisan opponents of Alva- 
rado, once more threatened to restore Mexican suprem- 
acy, and to overthrow the northern leader. Castillero 
had been commissioned in Mexico to bring to California 
the constitutional laws of December, 1836, which repre- 
sented the new order in Mexico, and to receive the oaths 
of allegiance to this new order from Calif ornian officials. 
Alvarado, before any collision of forces could take place, 

1 For the revolution, see Bancroft, loc. cit., pp. 452-476. 

2 Bancroft, loc. cit., p. 480. 



TEE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 27 

now resolved to dispose of the southern opposition by- 
removing its chief ostensible cause ; that is, by coming to 
terms with Castillero, by giving up his idea of mere fed- 
eration, and by thus consenting to submit himself to con- 
stitutional Mexican authority. He hoped, not wrongly, 
as the sequel proved, that he could in this way get confir- 
mation of himself as Mexican governor, and at the same 
time, so to speak, " dish " his southern enemies. This 
" triumph in defeat" 1 Alvarado gained by coming into 
friendly relations with Castillero, and by persuading 
him to go back to Mexico in Alvarado's own interest, so 
as to get what Castillero had not yet, authority to re- 
ceive Alvarado's submission, and further authority to 
make the latter, who still stood in the position of rebel, 
the constitutional governor of California. The southern 
opposition was thus for the time overcome. 

In October, 1837, the news of the appointment of a 
new governor, Carlos Carrillo, reached the land. The 
appointment had been made before Alvarado's submis- 
sion was heard of. The opponents of Alvarado were 
now once more delighted ; Carrillo was himself a well- 
known Californian, and commanded sympathy in the 
south. But, as turned out, he was politically incapable, 
and Alvarado forthwith determined to resist him, and 
did so successfully. In the subsequent warfare one 
little " battle " took place at San Buenaventura, which 
resulted in the death of one man and in the flight of 
the forces that represented Carrillo's party. In April, 
1838, Carrillo himself capitulated at Las Flores, some 
fifty or sixty miles north of San Diego ; and Alvarado 
was again left, after this once more nearly bloodless con- 
flict, in actual command of the country. 
1 Bancroft, loc. cit., p. 527. 



28 CALIFORNIA. 

The successful rebel and able political leader was now 
erelong confirmed by the central government as consti- 
tutional governor of what was henceforth to be called 
the " Department of California," and thus the northern 
party triumphed over the south and over the Mexicans 
also. The rest of the rule of Alvarado was indeed not 
perfectly peaceful. In 1840 he quarreled somewhat 
bitterly with General Vallejo, his relative, his com- 
mandante general, and his former partisan. In the 
same year a much more serious and important event 
took place, namely, the expulsion to Mexico of above 
forty foreigners, a company largely made up of Amer- 
icans and Englishmen, sailors, hunters, and vagabonds. 
Among them was one Isaac Graham, who had taken 
part with Alvarado himself in the revolution of 1836, 
and whom the expulsion, as it was represented to our 
public, converted into a great hero. He was, however, 
a rascal, and, as the documents show, even such were 
nearly all his fellows in exile. But the American and 
English governments were led to look upon the affair 
as an outrage, and eighteen of the expelled returned in 
freedom next year. The charge made against the exiles 
was that of plotting against the government, and this 
charge was not entirely unfounded ; but, as it was not 
legally proved, the expulsion was not in form justifiable, 
although far too much has since been made of the so- 
called outrage, for which Mexico had later to pay. 1 

In 1842 Mexico made one more effort to give Cali- 
fornia a Mexican governor, in the person of General 
Micheltorena. His well-meaning rule was embittered 
by the unfortunate character of the Mexican recruits 

1 Bancroft's account, as far as yet published, is in his "Pioneer 
Register," vol. iii. p. 763 of the California. 



THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 29 

that he brought with him when he came, since some of 
them were convicts, and all were disliked. In the end 
the Calif ornians, of nearly all parties, joined in a revolt 
against Micheltorena, at the end of 1844. In January, 
1845, the united insurgents, having retreated to the 
south, were followed nearly to Los Angeles by the little 
regular army of Micheltorena, which had been joined by 
a force from the Sacramento Valley, consisting of Amer- 
ican riflemen and of Indian servants of Captain Sutter. 
On the insurgent side, also, there were some Americans, 
residents in the south, who had a horror of the bad re- 
pute of Micheltorena' s soldiers, and who were determined 
to see all these " convicts " expelled from California. 
The Americans, however, from the two sides, met in 
a parley before the battle, and resolved to remain neu- 
tral. The " battle " itself was as bloodless as most Cali- 
fornian encounters. Tremendous cannonading is some- 
times said, in the accounts, to have taken place. Two or 
three horses and mules were hurt ; but the armies on both 
sides kept well out of range. The result was the capitu- 
lation of Micheltorena, the success of a new revolutionary 
government, and, towards the close of the year, a new 
mission of pacification from Mexico, and a new recog- 
nition of the existing order of things as the legal one. 
The governor of the Department was now Pio Pico, 
who was of the south, and was the senior legislator of 
the diputacion, while the commandante general was Jose 
Castro, who had formerly been prominent as a partisan 
of Alvarado, and who lived at Monterey. The old 
quarrel of north and south quickly reappeared between 
these two, and the rest of the political history of Cali- 
fornia, until the time of our conquest, is one of intrigue 
and petty quarrel, which might have led to another 



30 CALIFORNIA. 

bloodless civil war in 1846, had we not intervened with 
our own fashion of fighting. Civilized warfare was, in 
fact, introduced into California through the undertak- 
ings of our own gallant Captain Fremont. For in civ- 
ilized warfare, as is well known, somebody always gets 
badly hurt. 

in. THE CALIEORNIAN'S AS A PEOPLE. 

After this hasty glance at the past history of our 
province, we must describe in brief the character of the 
people, the condition of the country at the moment of 
our conquest, and the doings of our own countrymen in 
the land in the times before the conquest. 

California, as we see, was in 1846 an outlying and 
neglected Mexican province. Its missions, once pros- 
perous, had had their estates in large part secularized 
during the later years, had fallen into decay, and were 
now helpless, and sometimes in ruins. The mission In- 
dians had in large part disappeared. The church was 
no longer a power. The white population was made up 
principally of Spanish and Mexican colonists, whose 
chief industry was raising cattle for the hides and 
tallow, and whose private lives were free, careless, and 
on the whole, as this world goes, moderately charm- 
ing and innocent. So at least those who really knew 
them always tell us. These people were gay and jovial, 
full of good fellowship and hospitality. Nearly all 
the better families of the community were superior to 
the average of Mexicans, having generally a purer 
Castilian blood, since in many cases the colonists had 
come almost directly from Spain. Crime was confined 
in general to the lower sorts of people in the towns. 
The rancheros lived much as comparatively well-to-do 



THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 31 

countrymen of happy and unprogressive type always 
live when in a mild climate. They rode a great deal, 
dressed in gay colors, visited one another frequently, 
had very pleasant social gatherings, enjoyed many sports 
together, drank at times, gambled a little, lived to a 
good old age, and had very large families. In the 
towns, the life was a trifle more complex, and there was 
a sharper distinction of social classes. But the hearti- 
est hospitality, especially to strangers, was here, as in 
the country, almost universal. The rancheros paid their 
debts to the Yankee traders in the towns on the coast 
a little slowly ; but they were still on the whole a very 
honest folk, and generally paid in the end, in the cur- 
rency of the country, i. e., in hides, which the traders 
received at the uniform value of two dollars apiece, and 
sent to the United States by the Boston-bound ships. 
These ships, on their outward voyages, brought many- 
colored calicoes, together with boots, shoes, and nearly 
all the manufactured goods consumed in the country ; 
and the natives paid enormous prices for these things, of 
course without ever dreaming of home manufactures. 

The political feuds of the later years must not be 
interpreted as meaning that the Californians were re- 
vengeful and cruel, or that the whole thoughts of the 
people were devoted to quarrels and bitterness. On the 
contrary, the bloodless playfulness of these civil wars 
themselves, with their furious proclamations, their mock 
battles, — noisy but harmless, — and their peaceful end- 
ings, sufficiently characterizes the geniality, the simple- 
mindedness, the childish love of display, and the really 
humane tender-heartedness of this proud, gay, unpro- 
gressive, not very courageous, but surely comparatively 
guiltless people. Their private vices were of a youthful 



32 CALIFORNIA. 

and sensuous but not of a deeply corrupt type. Their 
domestic life itself was generally pure and devoted. 
Their wives and daughters were in almost all cases above 
reproach, and were models of their own sort of woman- 
hood. Sailor-boys, such as the young Dana's associates, 
might indulge in characteristic gossip about the supposed 
frailties of all Calif ornian women, — gossip such as was 
repeated in some passages of the " Two Years Before 
the Mast," — but those who knew the Calif ornians well, 
and lived among them, have no such flippant remarks 
to make. Domestic fidelity is a very frequent virtue 
among at least the women of peoples that are at once 
Catholic and pastoral ; and these California!! women 
were too remote from the world, and too decently 
trained, to hear of the vices of city life. The men, in- 
deed, — and especially the younger men, — in such life 
as lay outside of domestic relations, lacked moral fibre ; 
and some of the ablest of them early fell a prey to 
drunkenness or to worse vices. But their vices indicated, 
as we have said, rather a foolish youth than the developed 
brutality that our own Anglo-Saxon frontiersmen of the 
worst sort are accustomed to show. However worthy 
our American merchants and immigrant families often 
were in those days, our trappers and other like home- 
less wanderers in California in the years before 1846 
were commonly a very far worse set than the Californi- 
ans ; a fact which these vagabonds themselves were not 
slow to realize, and one which inspired them individu- 
ally with the most violent hatred and disgust towards all 
the rightful dwellers in the land. 

The Californians had, of course, little opportunity for 
cultivation, and they had generally few intellectual am- 
bitions. But, like the southern peoples of European 



TEE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 33 

blood generally, they had a great deal of natural quick- 
ness of wit, and in their written work often expressed 
themselves with ease and force. Their women were 
fascinating conversers, even when not at all educated. 
Their more noteworthy men, such as Alvarado, Vallejo, 
and others, were often persons of very marked intelli- 
gence and even of considerable reading. The curiously 
unequal aesthetic sense of the people always puzzled the 
American observer. They spoke and gestured with 
what seemed to^pjiJC-^yj-j^^swonderful grace. They 
appeared to be born musicians, and, quite without train- 
ing, they sang finely and played their guitars skillfully 
and spiritedly. They dressed with $p.e southern taste. 
All their movements on foot or on horseback were easy 
and picturesque f and their keen perception of beauty 
was in some ways marvelous. But, on the other hand, 
their houses were often very dirty and were seldom in 
the least attractive ; and if one attributes this to their 
simplicity and to their total lack of power to buy better 
things for their houses, one has still to mention that 
curiously disgusting practice of many rancheros, who 
were accustomed to slaughter animals and to strip and 
clean the carcasses almost, as it were, in their door- 
yards, and so to make the ground not far from their 
houses look like Golgotha. Hospitality to a stranger 
sometimes included slaughtering before his eyes the bul- 
lock that he was to eat, and preparing the carcass on the 
spot. And early travelers are never weary of complain- 
ing of the fleas found in nearly all the houses. 

That the Californian was uninventive, and was con- 
tent in his way with atrociously awkward mechanical 
devices, follows, of course, very easily from his national 
character and habits. His wagons had four sections of 
3 



34 CALIFORNIA. 

a log for wheels. He had hardly any good firearms, 
and could not use what he had to advantage against 
any American frontiersman, being himself no marks- 
man. He took care of his cattle and horses well enough 
for his very simple purposes, but cared little for further 
agricultural progress, and seldom even thought of using 
milch-cows. He was patriotic in his devotion to what 
he often called his country, namely, California itself. 
He was a fairly good citizen, submissive to his alcaldes, 
or local judges, and he was reasonably loyal to the po- 
litical faction that he had for the time espoused. But, 
in politics as in morals and in material wealth, he was 
unprogressive. When his time of trial should arrive he 
would show no great power of endurance. The coming 
temptations and excitements, the injustice and the un- 
kindness of a conquering and often wickedly progressive 
race, would often find him morally weak, and would 
rapidly degrade him, too often losing for him his man- 
hood and his soul altogether, to his own bitter shame, 
and often to the still greater shame of his stronger 
brother, the carelessly brutal American settler or miner. 

IV. THE AMERICANS IN CALIFORNIA BEFORE THE 
CONQUEST. 

Somewhat early in the century there appeared on the 
California coast American trading-vessels and whalers. 
By the voyage of the trading-vessel Sachem, in 1822, 
the trade between Boston and California was opened, 
and a cargo of tallow and hides was obtained at Mon- 
terey. 1 Hereafter the American trade rapidly in- 
creased, and in the end became the chief trade in exist- 
ence on the coast during the Mexican period. From 
1 Bancroft, vol. ii. p. 475. 



THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 35 

the East, meanwhile, trappers and hunters began to come 
overland to California as early as 1826, which was the 
year of a trapping party led by Jedediah S. Smith. 1 
From both of these sources of communication California 
received in the sequel additions to her population. The 
first Americans who were led to take up their residence 
in the land were, for the most part, men of character 
and ability, who were concerned in the Boston trading 
enterprises. Some of those who thus came, even before 
1830, have since been, in their own callings, prominent 
in California affairs down nearly to the present moment. 
When the new-comers had business in the land, and 
were well-disposed persons, they were, during the early 
Mexican period, very welcome among the hospitable 
Californians. Many applied for naturalization as Mexi- 
can citizens, and obtained it. A considerable number, 
in the sequel, married into Californian families ; some 
acquired land grants and became very prosperous. 
Mexican law, meanwhile, was always in form very strict 
about requiring passports of foreigners, and about sub- 
jecting them to a good deal of official watching. Such 
restrictions proved, however, of little practical incon- 
venience to men of good behavior and of responsible 
position in California. 

Before 1835, about thirty of the hunters who had en- 
tered California in the various overland parties are said 
to have taken up a more or less permanent abode in the 
land. 2 The popular feeling towards foreigners was in 
1835 still tolerant, and in many cases very cordial, 
and little fear of foreign aggression existed. In all, 
perhaps three hundred, according to Mr. Bancroft's 

1 Bancroft, vol. iii. p. 152. 

2 Ibid. p. 393. 



36 CALIFORNIA. 

estimate, would express the number of the foreign male 
population in 1835. 1 It was in this year that the young 
Dana's visit fell. In 1836 the American hunters near 
Monterey, together with some other foreigners, took 
part, as we have seen, in the Alvarado revolution. By 
1840, as we have also seen, some of these very men 
had rendered themselves so obnoxious as to bring about 
the expulsion of the less welcome foreigners in that year, 
— an expulsion which did not affect Americans of any 
position in the land, and which was probably not very 
seriously disapproved by the American merchants them- 
selves, or by the American land-owners. Yet, with the 
time of this occurrence, the era of greater or less 
trouble with foreigners may be said to have begun. 
But no general hatred or oppression of foreigners, such 
as has often been attributed to the Californians of this 
period, ever existed before 1846. The troubles, such 
as they were, were caused, during these last few years, 
almost altogether by the lawless, or at best suspicious, 
acts of a few foreign vagabonds. Such persons, escaped 
sailors, wandering hunters, adventurous rascals of va- 
rious sorts, were from time to time a source of trouble 
and anxiety to Californian alcaldes and governors. 
Such Americans as these were of course the loudest in 
their protests, when they were arrested or expelled, and 
such freely threatened that American citizens would 
take the first opportunity that offered to free this land 
from what these law-breakers naturally regarded as 
Mexican oppression. No wonder that all Californians 
came to dislike such people as these, and that some 
prominent men of the country extended this personal 

1 Bancroft, vol. iii. p. 402. This includes "sons of pioneers by- 
native wives." 



THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 37 

dislike to our whole nation. But, before the era of the 
conquest itself, we cannot say that the Calif ornians as 
a people were enemies of the American nation, or that 
we by rights need have feared any very violent opposi- 
tion from them to our own national schemes of com- 
merce and of possession in the Pacific regions. In 
1842, just as Micheltorena was on his way from Mexico 
to California, about to enter on his duties as governor, 
our naval commander in the Pacific, Commodore 
Thomas Ap Catesby Jones, hearing at Callao an un- 
founded report that our national difficulties with Mexico 
about Texas had already culminated in war, formed 
a hasty resolution to seize upon the ports of California, 
in advance of further orders from his government. Ac- 
cordingly he sailed to Monterey, entered the harbor, 
and seized the port, without meeting any resistance to 
his raising of the flag. The act produced no small 
momentary consternation in Monterey, but nobody there 
seems to have planned any serious measures of further 
defense. Hearing, however, that the report upon which 
he had acted was unfounded, Jones took down the flag 
the next day, apologized, and retired, stopping, on his 
voyage, at San Pedro, and visiting at Los Angeles the 
new Governor Micheltorena himself. Jones's apologies 
were accepted with a good-will by the Californians, and, 
while the central Mexican government took every pos- 
sible diplomatic advantage of the outrage, in the corre- 
spondence which ensued with our government, the Cal- 
ifornian people themselves, in their benighted state of 
semi-independence, showed a very imperfect sense of 
how much they had been injured by this insult offered 
to Mexico. The American merchants on the coast felt 
their intercourse with the Californians no less cordial 



38 CALIFORNIA. 

than before, and the incident passed by without further 
evil consequences. 1 

Most prominent, in the later years, among the Amer- 
ican merchants on the coast, was Thomas O. Larkin, a 
native of Massachusetts, a shrewd and able trader, who 
had come to California already in 1832, and who in the 
end acquired a considerable fortune as owner of a 
wholesale and retail store in Monterey. It was he who, 
in 1844, was made by our government the first, and, as 
it proved, the last, American consul. It was also he 
who, during the years between 1840 and 1846, most 
wisely and cautiously brought to bear his not inconsider- 
able personal influence to increase the good-will of the 
native Californians towards the American government 
and people, and who, by occasional letters to newspapers 
at home, labored to make his countrymen understand 
the importance of California. As we shall hereafter see, 
Larkin is the only American official who can receive 
nearly unmixed praise in connection with the measures 
that led to our acquisition of California. His actual 

1 For the correspondence between the Mexican and American gov- 
ernments about this affair see House Ex. Doc, 27th Congr., 3d Sess., 
vol. v. Doc. 166. For the views of the Californians, see Mr. Alfred 
Robinson's Life in California (New York, 1846), pp. 210, sqq. ; 
also Consul Larkin's letters to the State Department as later cited. 
Mr. Robinson's whole book is one of the best of the early American 
accounts of the people and of American life in the land. The author 
is, in 1885, still living in San Francisco, certainly the oldest surviving 
American pioneer, and a man of very fine ability and judgment. 
Much of the foregoing view of the Californian life and of the inter- 
course with Americans I have derived from unpublished statements 
now in Mr. Bancroft's library. Of these one of the most interesting 
descriptions of the people is that by Mr. W. H. Davis, a MS. en- 
titled Glimpses of the Past. Mr. Bancroft's invaluable treasures, 
the Lai-kin Papers, throw a great deal of indirect light on the same 
topic. 



THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 39 

effectiveness was indeed greatly hindered by the un- 
warranted doings of other people ; but he occupies the 
happy position of having done his official duty in the 
matter so far as he knew his duty. 

Larkin, though a clever servant in this one position, 
was no educated man. In his dispatches to the State 
Department he often writes rather uncouthly ; but he al- 
ways writes sensibly. Tn his business relations he was 
enterprising, fully possessed of his provincial shrewd- 
ness, and sometimes overbearing ; but his hospitality is 
always highly praised by the Americans of the time 
before the conquest, while his influential position as 
merchant at Monterey, together with his later official 
rank, made his house for some years before 1846 the 
social headquarters of the Americans in California. 
After the gold discovery he became for a while quite 
wealthy, and lived for some years in the East. He is 
said to have expressed chagrin (not, to be sure, with- 
out good cause), in view of the lack of appreciation that 
prominent people always showed for his past services in 
helping to win California. This imperfectly educated 
California trader no doubt appeared, in his later years, 
to poor advantage in New York and Washington, where 
he had no influential friends to sound his praises in 
political circles ; but history will give him the credit of 
having been his country's most efficient instrument in 
California at the period of the conquest. 

His correspondence, both with his mercantile friends 
in California and with the State Department at Wash- 
ington, has been preserved among his family papers, and 
is now in Mr. H. H. Bancroft's hands. It is the best 
source extant concerning the moods, the hopes, the 
fears, the murmurings, the petty personal quarrels, the 



40 CALIFORNIA. 

private gossip, and the whole social life of the American 
traders in California before the conquest ; and, as we 
shall see, it is the only source, save the Washington 
archives, whence can be derived a knowledge of the 
true official story of the conquest itself. 

Between 1839 and 1846 there grew up in the Sacra- 
mento Valley a settlement of Americans, composed partly 
of most worthy and conservative men, and partly of 
such wanderers as we before have mentioned. Of all 
the early American undertakings in the land, this was 
naturally the one that aroused most seriously and justly 
the suspicions of the Californians. Most of these new- 
comers reached California overland. Many of them 
were persons but little known to the natives, while some 
of them were, unfortunately, too well known. Only a 
few of them appeared very frequently, or were well 
and favorably regarded, on the coast. The others were 
understood, after 1844, to be occasionally plotting a 
rising against the authorities of the Department ; and 
some of them were certainly men of bad character. 
Therefore, although the settlement, whose nucleus was 
Captain J. A. Sutter's Fort, near the junction of the 
American and Sacramento rivers, was an officially rec- 
ognized thing, and although Sutter himself was a regu- 
lar officer of the government, and had received in 1841 
a land grant of the maximum legal amount (eleven 
square leagues) from Governor Alvarado, still the Cal- 
ifornians suspected Sutter's settlers more than they did 
any other large company of Americans, and feared very 
often the consequences that might ensue if many more 
immigrants same over the Sierras. It was never so 
much any official American aggression as the coming of 
bad Americans that the Californians of those days seri- 



THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 41 

ously and justly dreaded. There was indeed never any 
thought of actually expelling these new-comers, because 
every one saw the impossibility, after 1843, of any such 
attempt. And if the new settlers should prove peace- 
able men, the Californians were never disposed to mal- 
treat them. But the settlers themselves were frequently 
the most willing to give a boastful and bad account of 
the great things that they would yet do in the land. 

John A. Sutter himself was of Swiss family, and of 
German birth. He long (to say the least of it) per- 
mitted the story to be circulated that he had been in the 
service of Charles X. in France ; but in later years he 
admitted the falsity of the report. After living some 
years in our country, and becoming a citizen, he came 
to California in 1839, by the way of the overland route 
to Oregon, and by a sea passage from Oregon via the 
Sandwich Islands. He at once founded, with official 
permission, his settlement in the Sacramento Valley, 
and two years later got his grant of land. In 1841 
he was joined by some of the American immigrants 
who came overland that year, and the subsequent 
years saw a rapid increase of his prosperity and of 
the numbers of those who either assisted him, or took 
up land under his grant, or used his fort as their ren- 
dezvous. He employed many Indians, raised large 
crops of grain, aimed to make his little colony the pro- 
ducer of nearly all its own supplies, showed much hos- 
pitality to new-comers, and, in 1845, undertook to assist 
Governor Micheltorena in the latter's troubles. In con- 
sequence of this last blunder he was on poor terms with 
the successful revolutionary authorities during the brief 
remainder of the Mexican period. In character Sutter 
was an affable and hospitable visionary, of hazy ideas, 



42 CALIFORNIA. 

with a great liking for popularity, and with a mania for 
undertaking too much. An heroic figure he was not, 
although his romantic position as pioneer in the great 
valley made him seem so to many travelers and his- 
torians. When the gold-seekers later came, the am- 
bitious Sutter utterly lost his head, and threw away all 
his truly wonderful opportunities. He, however, also 
suffered many things from the injustice of the new-com- 
ers. He died a few years since in poverty, complaining 
bitterly of American ingratitude. He should undoubt- 
edly have been better treated by most of our country- 
men, but, if he was often wronged, he was also often in 
the wrong, and his fate was the ordinary one of the per- 
sistent and unteachable dreamer. He remained to the 
end a figure more picturesque than manly in our Cal- 
ifornia life. 

The settlers at and near Sutter's Fort included some 
families and a number of very able young men. In 
January, 1844, the fort was visited by the first exploring 
expedition that the young officer of engineers, then Lieu- 
tenant Fremont, conducted to the land. The expedition 
had crossed the Sierras in midwinter ; and now, greatly 
exhausted and nearly starved, the men were overjoyed 
to meet with the delights of Sutter's hospitality. This 
expedition it was that the young leader so finely de- 
scribed in his great Report, a work that soon became 
almost universally known, and that will always remain 
a monument of literary skill in its kind. While the 
exploring expedition had really visited little country 
that was not already more or less known to settlers 
or to trappers, this description first let the public hear 
of the places that had been seen. I fancy that this 
Report will be, in future generations, General Fre- 



THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 43 

mont's only title, and a very good one, to lasting and 
genuine fame. 

Just at the very moment of the conquest, the greatest 
of the overland immigrations, so far, was taking place, 
that to California and Oregon in 1846. Although this 
company reached the land after the conquest, their 
journey should be treated of before the conquest, because, 
when they set out, they knew nothing of the change. 
The importance of their movement, which brought to 
California directly several hundred new settlers, and by 
way of Oregon many more, cannot well be overestimated. 
The men of 1846 afterwards joined the other Ameri- 
cans, during the interregnum, in building up for them- 
selves the strong conservative sentiment that proved so 
useful in the constitutional convention of 1849. The 
new-comers arrived in time, also, to join in suppressing 
the revolt of the winter of 1846-47 ; and their jour- 
ney overland was marked by numerous interesting in- 
cidents, of which we have good accounts. Two of the 
best books ever written on emigrant life were produced 
by men of this company ; x and the latest of all the im- 
migrants of this year formed the famous and unhappy 
Donner party, whose sufferings will always remain prom- 
inent among the tales of human sorrow. Their story 
belongs to the winter of 1846-47 ; but, as we have said, 
all these events are in effect prior to the conquest, of 
which the people concerned knew nothing until they 
reached California. 

The Donner party, to speak very briefly of this affair, 
consisted of some eighty men, women, and children. 
On the way they were belated by the difficulties of 

1 J. Q. Thornton's Oregon and California (New York, 1849, 2 vols.) 
and Edwin Bryant's What I Saw in California (New York, 1848). 



0» i.K s ran 

:. ■ i ■ ■ 

& • ■ [ a J m 

. . 

. . . ^ i . . . . : 

. • . I . 5 . . - . . - 

iJ3tt*Nft 

■ is 1^ tV.V..-« ,' . - . . . IV* 

... .....'. ... 

S ..-'.. s, ' 

I .^xr 

...... 

M aH It - Itt 

. . Wdtv - . - - ^ 

. * - 

* 

i i . mi «|xmi ss*db *> 

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w^ta itaar <<*3tfe 

. .'-.urfeil iv. . s . . . . **d 

s v.u .. . 



w) axd /'//■■ sru ix at: us 1,> 

must HOW l»0 their only refuge, Suilcv's 1 >v«> Indians 
remained with I hem, as helpless as themselves. 

VUo subsequent tale of starvation, of * 1 » < ^ " forlorn 

Hope," and Of lis :;iv.it otYort to iva.'h the settlements 

in the Sacramento Valley, an effort in which seven out 
of tho twenty two in tho *' forlorn Hope" succeeded, 
of tho successive relief expeditions from tho valley, of the 
:;iv.ii loss of life in tl»o whole Donncr party, of the re- 
sort io 1mm. in tlosh, and of the tlnal rescue in the l.no 
winter ami in the spring of 18-17, all this is too loftfi loi- 
ns to loll ho iv.' The story is a very instructive one, 
however, as an illustration of jnst tho strength ami tho 

weakness that moil aiul women oi our eenlnrv anol race 
show mnliT sueh (rials \ ami it well ilosorvos tho olaho 
rato treatment that it has in later tunes received. 

In closing onr account of California as tho compiost 
found u, wo havo yet t\w> things to mention that DPOVOd 
in the sequel to ho of vast importance io all eoneerued. 
One is the system of lain! grants that, in the latov years, 
h:nl more ami more developed itself. Most of the 
ranches in California in 18-10 were held under grants 
made by the various governors oi California, grants 
legally subject to a continuation from the general go\ 
ernment, although this continuation was not usuallv 
considered of sufficient importance lo ho actually oh 
tamoil. The governors made their grail ts under coloni- 
sation laws, and wore therefore limited somewhat as 

| I'ho best authority is MoGlMhAH'a //•■-•'. '-;. .;-' 
s.ni PtmioIsoo, issiv rhornto&'i aooonnt hn till •• 
hi<i is klso good Suium':. i\>v< ii-.,ii.u\'. won kllUd ludofttwn t>) Utt 
m.u v in.-, mombora oi tho "Forlorn n>>jn>", .-nut tht hospitable Swt 
tci. In his latest statements, maintained bittorlj oi this ungrateful 
.vi, \v hereby, aa ho says, ho lost not onl\ his hoof hut his two ffooil 
Liuiiaus 



46 CALIFORNIA. 

to the number of square leagues that could be granted 
to one person, and as to the places and conditions of 
the grants. No exact survey was ever made of the 
tracts granted, which usually were defined, each as so 
and so many square leagues, to be taken within given 
outside boundaries, the boundaries themselves being gen- 
erally natural ones, or else parallels of latitude. Another 
fashion of land grants existed, however, within the limits 
of legally recognized pueblos, or towns. Each of these 
had, namely, in theory, a tract of four square leagues, 
within which its authorities might grant lots of land to 
actual settlers. This tract was of course actually ill de- 
fined, and the nature of the town's title to the land was, 
to our American minds, somewhat obscure. Upon indi- 
vidual land titles, whether derived from ranch grants 
or pueblo rights, there frequently were imposed, by the 
terms of the grant, special conditions, whose nature also 
often seemed obscure, since in many cases they were 
left unobserved, although the grant might still receive, 
in all later years, every practical official recognition. 
On the whole, then, this system of Mexican grants, sim- 
ple, vague, and useful enough for the purposes of a pas- 
toral people widely scattered over a vast territory, was 
sure to cause doubt, vexation, and sorrow whenever a 
new and numerous population should appear, and when- 
ever the land should grow valuable. 

The other important fact to be mentioned is that, be- 
tween 1836 and 1846, on the shores of San Francisco 
Bay, at a considerable distance from the old mission in 
one direction and from the presidio of San Francisco in 
another, there had grown up the beginnings of the mod- 
ern city in the village of Yerba Buena, named from the 
cove in front of it. This little village was from the 



THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 47 

first a trading-place, whose dwellers were mostly Amer- 
icans, Englishmen, and other foreigners. The Hudson 
Bay Company maintained an establishment here for 
some years, but withdrew it in 1845. The most promi- 
nent men there, at the beginning of 1846, were a few 
American merchants. Grants of lots of land had been 
made at Yerba Buena, and this portion of the already 
legally existent pueblo of San Francisco (whose bounda- 
ries, had they been then defined, would have extended 
far to the south on the peninsula) occupied in many 
minds the place of the promising nucleus of a future 
great city. 

With this preliminary sketch of the country, of its 
inhabitants, and of its strangers, in the days before our 
conquest, we must pass to the proper subject of our dis- 
course, to the coming, to the deeds, and to the fortunes, 
of our people in California between 1846 and 1856. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE AMERICAN AS CONQUEROR: THE SECRET MISSSION 
AND THE BEAR FLAG. 

In the strict sense, we Americans have seldom been 
conquerors ; and early California shows us our na- 
tion in this somewhat rare character. A few men did 
the work for us ; but their acts were in some cases di- 
rectly representative of the national qualities, and in 
others of far-reaching influence on the life and character 
of our people in California in the subsequent days. For 
both reasons these acts concern us deeply here, and are 
very instructive for our purposes. 

Moreover, the story of the conquest belongs, for yet 
other reasons, even more to national than to local an- 
nals. Our plans for getting the coveted land, and the 
actual execution of these plans, are a part of the drama 
of the Mexican War, and our national honor is deeply 
concerned in the interpretation that shall be given to the 
facts. As for the treatment of these facts here, a bare 
summary would be, in the present day, more vexatious 
than a detailed study ; for a bare summary would either 
leave all the mysteries unsolved, or else seem to fill all 
the gaps with mere dogmas. The whole story of the 
conquest is turbid with popular legends. We cannot 
follow the narrative in a simple way, and tell incident 
after incident. The condition of our knowledge of the 
subject forbids such a purely narrative procedure save 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 49 

in fragments. What can be given might indeed be sug- 
gestively entitled " Commentaries on the Conquest," in 
a very literal sense of the word commentary. We have 
to employ numerous sources of information, and to use 
our best historical intelligence. Yet we beseech the 
reader not to despair of finding in this chapter the inter- 
est that properly belongs to a dramatic series of events. 
These very problems of the conquest, the mysteries that 
have hung over parts of the story, are, as we have just 
hinted, themselves dramatic, and the investigation seems 
to me to present many elements of exciting interest, 
even apart from the original fascination of the incidents. 

The subsequent history of the American people in 
California turns, we have suggested, in large measure 
upon the occurrences of the conquest. The prejudices, 
the enmities, and the mistakes of that unhappy time 
bore rich fruit in the sequel, determining to a great ex- 
tent the future relations of the new-comers and the na- 
tives ; and these relations in their turn determined, in no 
small degree, both the happiness and the moral welfare 
of the new-comers themselves. We must understand 
the conquest if we are to understand what followed. 
The attitude that chance, the choice of one or two rep- 
resentative men, and our national character made us 
assume towards the Californians at the moment of our 
appearance among them as conquerors, we have ever 
since kept, with disaster to them, and not without 
disgrace and degradation to ourselves. The story is 
no happy one ; but this book is written, not to extol 
our transient national glories, but to serve the true patri- 
ot's interest in a clear self-knowledge, and in the for- 
mation of sensible ideals of national greatness. 

From the point of view of the study of historical fact 
4 



50 CALIFORNIA. 

as such, this history of the conquest is one of the stran- 
gest examples of the vitality of the truth. Never were 
the real motives and methods of a somewhat complex 
undertaking more carefully, or, by the help of luck, 
more successfully, hidden from the public than the 
methods and motives of certain of our national agents iri 
California at the time of the conquest have for a gener- 
ation been hidden. And never has accident more un- 
mercifully turned at last upon its own creations. 

I. THE CONFIDENTIAL AGENT, AND THE BEGINNING OF 

WAR. 

As the reader knows from the foregoing, our hearts 
were set upon California as one prize that made the 
Mexican War most worth fighting. The Bay of San 
Francisco, the future commerce of the Pacific, the fair 
and sunny land beyond the Sierras, the full and even 
boundary westward, the possible new field for the ex- 
tension of slavery, — such motives were powerful with 
some or all of our leaders. The hasty seizure of Mon- 
terey in 1842, although wholly disavowed by our gov- 
ernment, was a betrayal of our national feeling, to say 
the least, if not of our national plans, which no apology 
could withdraw from plain history. Meanwhile, with 
more or less good foundation, we had strong fears of 
both England and France as dangerous rivals in the 
acquisition of this western land. In short, to use the 
phrase so Often repeated by opponents of the Mexican 
War, California formed a great part of the " Naboth's 
vineyard " that we coveted, and that for years we had 
expected some day to get by the fairest convenient 
means. 

Nor was our desire for California in itself an evil. 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 51 

However difficult the righteous satisfaction of the desire 
might prove, this desire was inevitable. Our national 
duty doubtless forbade our cheerful surrender of the 
Pacific coast to any European power. And by sloth, 
neglect, and misgovernment, Mexico had done all she 
could do to make her California vineyard bring forth 
wild grapes, and to forfeit her proprietary rights in its 
soil. Not " Naboth " in this case was the one whom we 
were most in danger of wronging, although indeed we 
did wrong him fearfully. He, poor fellow, was dis- 
tracted in his own house, tilled not his own fields, and 
often was stained with blood. It was the true proprietor 
of California that, when we coveted the land, we were 
most apt to injure ; it was the disorganized but not 
wholly unpromising young nation of a few thousand 
cheerful, hospitable, and proud souls on the Pacific coast 
that we were especially bound to respect. With their 
good-will if possible, and at all events with the strictest 
possible regard for their rights, we were bound in honor 
to proceed in our plans and undertakings on the Pacific 
coast. The Mexican War, if deliberately schemed, and 
forced into life through our aggressive policy, would be 
indeed a crime ; but it would be adding another great 
crime if we wronged these nearly independent Califor- 
nians, while assailing their unkind but helpless mother. 
The slow and steady growth of the American settle- 
ments in California was not the result of any definite 
plot on the part of our government. Yet, as the corre- 
spondence of the State Department with Consul Larkin 
shows, the government was curious concerning this very 
matter ; and the American colonization was looked upon 
as a fortunate occurrence for us, and as a process that, 
if let alone by the course of events and particularly by 



52 CALIFORNIA. 

European aggressors, might of itself suffice, here as in 
Texas, to secure to us the country. Yet nobody in- 
tended to leave the decision of the matter to so slow a 
process as this. Natural colonization would need to be 
assisted. 

During 1845, and after the accession of the Polk ad- 
ministration, our government was busily preparing for 
the expected Mexican War ; and of course California 
had a large place in the cabinet policy. Buchanan 
was then secretary of state, Marcy of war, and Mr. 
George Bancroft of the navy. To Buchanan natu- 
rally fell much of the work of dealing directly with Na- 
both ; while Mr. Bancroft prepared repeated instruc- 
tions to our naval squadron in the Pacific, and strength- 
ened it gradually for its work. Just how California 
entered into these administration plans, this there was 
good reason at the time for keeping profoundly secret. 
It is helpful, however, to remind ourselves that there 
were, on the surface of things, three definable and not 
unnatural ways of undertaking the task. Possibly no 
one was chosen ; possibly one was decidedly preferred ; 
possibly they were in some way combined. But, stated 
in a merely formal way, and for our own purposes 
sharply distinguished, they were : (1) to wait until 
war had been forced upon Mexico and actually begun, 
and thereupon to seize the Dej)artment of California as 
an act of war ; (2) to undertake, with semi-official 
support of some sort, the colonization of the country by 
an unnaturally rapid immigration of Americans into 
it ; and (3) to take advantage of the strained relations 
already existing between California and the mother 
country, and, by means of intrigue, to get the land 
through the act of its own native inhabitants. 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 53 

The question as to the use made of these possible 
plans is, however, at once complicated for us by the fact 
that the conquest, as it actually occurred in 1846, seems 
to express on the face of events a plan that at least in 
part differs from all the foregoing, and that for boldness, 
both physical and moral, would surpass them altogether. 
This plan is the one usually supposed to have found ex- 
pression in the singular operations of the gallant young 
Captain Fremont with his surveying party, in the spring 
of 1846. I must beg the reader to approach this very 
curious historical problem with a mind quite free from 
all presuppositions, since, as we shall soon see, the his- 
torians of California have always been not only much 
perplexed about the matter, but also in some respects 
misled. The whole truth about Captain Fremont's op- 
erations in California in 1846 has never so far been 
told. But, at all events, whatever the truth, the appear- 
ances, as they have been interpreted, have certainly 
been made to indicate a fourth plan, whose independ- 
ence of all moral considerations on the part of the 
government said to have ordered it, and whose auda- 
cious vigor, would put it on a level with that Russian 
Central Asian policy, whereof the Penjdeh incident has 
recently reminded the world. The execution of this 
supposed plan gave Captain Fremont a national reputa- 
tion, nearly made him, ten years later, president, and 
still remains his most popular title to distinction. 

To speak of this supposed fourth plan is to plunge at 
once into the incidents of the conquest itself, and forces 
us to begin with its romantic first scene, the ''Bear 
Flag Affair." We shall indeed have to return later to 
the point of departure, and from the California affairs 
of 1846 we shall need to go back to the Washington 



54 CALIFORNIA. 

councils of 1845 ; but this defect in our narrative is not 
ours, but belongs of necessity to the comprehension of a 
problematic and, in the past, partly legendary story. 

The young Captain Fremont, of the topographical 
engineers, had, as we all know, and as the foregoing 
chapter has more particularly shown, acquired before 
1845 a great public reputation by what most people 
called a kind of discovery of California, inasmuch as 
he had described his own journey thither, and in a most 
excellent narrative had brought the fair land before the 
eyes of numberless readers. When he set out in 1845 
on a new expedition, he was certain to be followed with 
no little interest. This time it was at least his ostensible 
object to explore the most direct routes to the Pacific 
coast, and to do topographical work in California. He 
was accompanied by some sixty men, surveyors, guides, 
and assistants. The party were well armed, and had 
about two hundred horses. During the winter they 
came in two divisions through the Sierras, and when 
the two divisions had found each other once more, after 
considerable difficulty, the captain, almost alone, went, 
with a passport from Sutter, to Monterey, and asked 
permission from Castro "to winter" with his party "in 
the valley of the San Joaquin, for refreshment and re- 
pose." So he tells us himself, 1 and adds that leave was 
granted, "and also leave to continue my explorations 
south to the region of the Rio Colorado." In the last 
days of February, as he then says, he began his march 
south, " crossing into the valley of the Salinas." The 
purpose of going south from the San Joaquin Valley to 
the Rio Colorado by way of the Salinas Valley, as if 

1 In his defense before the Kearny -Fremont court-martial, Sen. 
Ex. Doc. 33, 1st Session, 30th Congress, p. 372. 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 55 

one should set out to survey the region from the Mo- 
hawk Valley to the Potomac by crossing over into the 
Connecticut River Valley, was neither at the time, nor 
in the immediately following investigations, made per- 
fectly plain by the friends of Captain Fremont, although 
he has since given a more definite explanation. At all 
events, we have his assurance before the Kearny court- 
martial that "the object of the expedition was wholly 
of a scientific character, without the least view to mil- 
itary operations, and with the determination to avoid 
them as being, not only unauthorized by the govern- 
ment, but detrimental or fatal to the pursuit in which I 
was engaged." Under these circumstances a difficulty 
which now occurred with General Jose Castro was 
especially unfortunate, both for the pursuit in which 
Captain Fremont was so far engaged and for other in- 
terests. In the midst of his march through the Salinas 
Valley, and as a result of petty occurrences for which 
his rude men were by no means blameless, Captain Fre- 
mont received a notification from Castro to depart, ac- 
companied with threats of violence in case he should not 
obey. The consequence is well known. The young 
captain " took a position on the Sierra," on the Gavilan 
peak, overlooking the Salinas Valley, " intrenched it, 
raised the flag of the United States, and awaited the 
approach of the assailants." But Castro's anxiety to 
assail such a position, guarded by American riflemen, 
was more apparent than real. And, on the other hand, 
the gallant captain of the topographical party desired 
only to bid a temporary defiance, and was not anxious 
to begin an aggressive war. After a few days he re- 
tired, aiming for the San Joaquin Valley, and retreating 
with leisurely stages northward. This was in March, 



56 CALIFORNIA. 

1846. He passed through the Sacramento Valley to- 
wards Oregon, and had already reached the Oregon 
border, on the banks of Klamath Lake, when he was 
overtaken by a new-comer from Washington, Lieutenant 
Archibald Gillespie, who had nearly caught up with the 
main party, when Captain Fremont, advised of Gilles- 
pie's approach, turned back with a few men and met 
him. 

The meeting was a romantic one, but its romance 
sounds very hackneyed now, since the tale has been re- 
peated in so many books of Western adventure. It is 
enough to remind the reader that the night following 
the meeting was enlivened by an attack made by lurk- 
ing Indians, who killed three of Captain Fremont's 
men before the wholly unguarded little company were 
fairly awake, and who were then promptly repulsed. 
But, before this incautious sleep had taken possession of 
the camp, Gillespie had delivered to the young captain 
a packet of family letters from Senator Benton, a letter 
of introduction from the secretary of state at Washing- 
ton, and some verbal information of an official nature. 
Gillespie had left Washington with secret personal in- 
structions from the president, and with a secret dis- 
patch, early in November, 1845. This meeting on the 
shores of Klamath Lake took place on the evening of 
the 9th of May, 1846. Gillespie, after reaching Mon- 
terey and seeing Consul Larkin there, had promptly 
sought out Captain Fremont, whom the government had 
quite certainly intended him to meet. 

The nature of the information delivered to Captain 
Fremont has remained heretofore, for the public, a 
mystery ; and writers have vied with each other in 
guesses, although they have usually inferred that, at all 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 57 

events, what Gillespie delivered somehow officially 
authorized Captain Fremont's subsequent course. 

The common argument upon this topic insists espe- 
cially upon the peculiar facts about Gillespie's mission, — 
facts made public in some well-known later testimony 
that will concern us farther on. The lieutenant had 
come in haste across Mexico, had brought with him 
nothing written relating to his mission save his letters 
of introduction and the private packet from Senator 
Benton, whose contents, as we shall see, are said to have 
been otherwise secured against intrusion. But the 
really important, directly official part of his mission, 
namely, his secret dispatch, had been committed to 
memory by the lieutenant, and then destroyed, before 
he landed in Mexico. In California he repeated its 
contents to Captain Fremont. The obvious inference, 
as people very plausibly say, is, in view of the subsequent 
events, that Captain Fremont was instructed to use his 
force to attempt what was possible, with the least need- 
ful compromising of his government, in the way of stir- 
ring up the American settlers and any other available 
persons against the authorities of the Department, so as 
to get for us the territory in advance of the declaration 
of war. If possible, says this commonly received story, 
he was to avoid too great prominence as an officer of 
the United States, but he was by all means to get the 
territory. And so here would be the fourth plan above 
mentioned. If that actually was our plan, which indeed 
yet remains to be tested, then we were not to trouble 
ourselves to get first, in the eyes of the world, a show of 
belligerent authority ; nor were we, by multiplying the 
numbers of our countrymen settled in the land, to ac- 
quire gradually a color of right to interfere on their be- 



58 CALIFORNIA. 

half ; nor yet were we, by peaceful intrigue with the 
native government of the already rebellious Depart- 
ment, to win its leaders over to our side. These meth- 
ods would all have been morally dubious. The fourth 
method, if it was truly our method, would certainly call 
for no doubts as to its true nature in the light of the 
moral law. According to that method, we should have 
used the presence of this gallant young officer, with his 
armed force, to seize for ourselves without warning upon 
an unprotected Department, and so in time of peace to 
gain for our country the prize of war. Precedents 
enough can indeed be found in history for such under- 
takings, but this plan would be, at least in our brief 
annals, not a frequently adopted device, nor one pre- 
cisely pleasing to the consciences of the more sensitive 
of our countrymen. Such, then, is one traditional un- 
derstanding of the matter, and of course this under- 
standing throws all the responsibility on the government. 
The reader must not, however, hastily conclude that 
Gillespie's mission is to be so readily understood ; for 
possibly, in the absence of further light, we may fail to 
do justice both to the cabinet and to Captain Fremont, 
— who, for the rest, is usually considered as merely the 
instrument, — unless we suspend our decision a little. 
But at all events, what immediately followed seems on 
its face to support the theory that this supposed fourth 
plan was the real object of Gillespie's mission. For, so 
soon as the instructions had been delivered, Captain 
Fremont returned to the Sacramento Valley ; and not 
long afterwards, certain settlers who visited his camp 
near the " Buttes " began to hear, and to repeat, both 
to him and to one another, wild and alarming rumors 
of what Castro and the Californians were intending to 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 59 

do to our countrymen. Castro, they declared, had pro- 
claimed it as his purpose to drive all Americans out of 
the country, to lay waste their farms, to raise the Indians 
against them, to destroy them altogether. The captain 
of the surveying party still declined to accede to the 
appeals of these frequenters of his camp for immediate 
armed interference in their behalf, but he gave them to 
understand that, if they were assailed, he would help 
them. One story, and in fact the most authoritative 
one, also knows that in secret he spoke more plainly, 
and that his orders alone brought about the first hostile 
act of Americans against the government of the Depart- 
ment. Of this we shall hear more soon ; but in any 
case, whether his words or the courage of the settlers 
produced the first outbreak, certain it is that early in 
June hostilities began. A band of horses, the property 
of the Californian government, was just then, as it 
chanced, in charge of a party of men containing among 
its chief members Lieutenant Arce. This party were 
bringing the horses from Sonoma to the south, by a cir- 
cuitous route, namely, by way of Sutter's Fort, fording 
the Sacramento River near that point. A band of Amer- 
ican settlers, some twelve in number, led by one Mer- 
ritt, a frontiersman of no great reputation for all virtues, 
came upon this party after it had forded the Sacramento 
and had passed southward some miles. The Americans 
seized upon the body of horses, but released the men, 
who, quite unprepared for such an attack, had made no 
resistance. The latter were now charged to take the 
news to Castro at their pleasure. The marauding 
Americans sent the horses to Captain Fremont's camp, 
and then quickly reinforced, as the news flew, by settlers, 
who now, at any rate, felt certain that hostilities with 



60 CALIFORNIA. 

Castro must come, rapidly proceeded to Sonoma, took 
possession of the unguarded and sleeping town on the 
morning of June 14th, and thereafter sent as prisoners 
to Sutter's Fort, under an escort, four leading men of 
the place, General Vallejo, his brother Salvador, Mr. 
Leese, and M. Priidon. 

The main body of the Americans, remaining at So- 
noma, were quickly strengthened by numerous additions 
of a very miscellaneous character. Some of the settlers 
who thus came were peaceable men, of high respecta- 
bility, who felt that now the thing was once begun every 
American man must join it in self-defense. Others, 
again, of good character, were seriously alarmed by the 
aforesaid rumors, which they had heard near Captain 
Fremont's camp. Others who came were just such 
rogues and vagabonds as might be expected under the 
circumstances. 1 At Sonoma they awaited in arms Cas- 
tro's coming, not to mention the generally desired ap- 
pearance of their expected ally, Captain Fremont ; they 
chose officers, helped themselves in the town to what- 
ever supplies they needed for their new military life, 
and also did what most of all has been remembered 
concerning their brief life together at Sonoma, namely, 
they raised their new flag, a standard of somewhat uncer- 
tain origin as regards the cotton cloth whereof it was 
made ; and on it they painted with berry-juice some- 
thing that they called a Bear. 

II. THE BEAR-FLAG HEROES. 

So far we have followed the results of the acts of the 
young Captain Fremont, regarding the whole as his un- 

1 My impressions on these matters are founded in part on MS. 
statements, and in part on documents hereafter to he quoted- 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 61 

dertaking. But in the little interval that elapsed before 
he appeared in person at Sonoma, these Bear Flag men, 
more or less conscious of their independent responsibil- 
ities, lived through a very curious episode of California 
history, — one that seemed to some of them afterwards 
ineffably glorious, and that in fact was unspeakably 
ridiculous, as well as a little tragical, and for the coun- 
try disastrous. Until Captain Fremont considered him- 
self warranted in coming to the help of this Spartan 
band to save them from their not often clearly visible, 
but, in their glowing fancy, multitudinous hosts of ene- 
mies, the Bear Flag men had things all in their own 
way ; and the gallant captain was directly responsible, 
at the moment, neither for their glory nor for their 
misbehavior. They had, as a rule, the wildest notions 
of what they were there to do. The first party, left 
behind when the prisoners were taken to Sutter's Fort, 
increased rapidly, as we have said ; but of course these 
additions were stragglers, and every man brought his 
private conceptions. Captain Fremont had come with 
the United States army to liberate the country ; the 
wicked Spaniards were assailing the inoffensive Amer- 
icans at Sonoma, who needed the help of their brave 
comrades ; the Americans had determined to be free 
from Spanish misrule, and had raised aloft the standard 
of freedom and equal rights ; in a shorter form, the fun 
had begun, — such were notions that filled some men's 
heads. Others, as we have suggested, well knew that 
they were there engaged as marauders ,in making quite 
an unprovoked assault on the Californians. One, Mr. 
Wm. Baldridge, in his statement made for Mr. Ban- 
croft's library, says, as he looks back on those days : 
" My own sentiments were that making war upon the 



62 CALIFORNIA. 

Californiaiis was an act of great injustice : but. as the 
deed had been done, I preferred taking the risk of be- 
ing killed in battle to that of being sent to Mexico in 
iro::.-." But Mr. Baldridge himself remained in doubt 
for some time after the beginning of the difiiculties as 
to whether war would really result. The whole affair, 
to his mind, was " brought on so gradually " that, even 
after the motley company had spent a number of days 
together, few could have given any connected account 
of what had really brought them there. The few that 
could give any connected account, however, are the ones 
who endow the whole affair with its true humor. 

Among the party who " surprised the fortress " of So- 
noma, or who, in plain speech, waked up the sleeping 
and defenseless villagers on the morning of June 14, was 
the noble-hearted Dr. Semple. a man at that time not 
quite forty years of age. a Kentuckian. about seven feet 
high in the body, and in soul, of course, incomparably 
loftier. He was not exactly a typical frontiersman, al- 
though he liked to appear as such : ' nor yet a typical 
statesman, although he was conscious of some approach 
in spirit to that dignity. Nor was he a typical orator, 
nor even a typical product of the world's higher civil- 
ization, although at times he seemed to hmiself to be all 
of these things. He was. however, a man of some nat- 
ural ability, and of an especially American talent for 
public affairs, but he was subject to the chief character- 
istic follies of his time and nation. He could preside 
well at a public meeting, and he later made an excellent 

1 " He is in a buckskin dress,'" says his later partner, Walter Col- 
ton (Three Years in California, New York, 1852, p. 32), writing but 
a few months after this time, "a foxskiu cap; is true with his rifle, 
ready with his pen, and quick at the type-case." 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 63 

president of the Constitutional Convention in 1849. 
He was enterprising, kindly, and honest. As editor of 
the " Californian," in 1846-48, he did good public ser- 
vice. But these excellences are as characteristic of 
our nation and of frontier training as are his weak- 
nesses. In our truly American fashion he trusted in 
liberty, speech-making, God, and the press ; he was 
boastful, garrulous, oratorical, evidently putting all due 
trust in the public discussions of great questions by 
wrangling fellow-citizens. When American interests 
were concerned as against foreigners, he was as blind as 
the divine justice, only with a slightly different result. 
Those who knew him in early days never forgot his vast 
height, his ready flow of speech, his righteous, glowing, 
and empty idealism, his genial assumption of statesman- 
ship, his often highly serviceable cleverness, his sturdy 
honor and uprightness, his ambition, and, after all, his 
ineffectiveness in accomplishing the objects of his am- 
bition. 

Now Dr. Semple became, as fortune would have it, 
the Thucydides of the Bear Flag war. If one objects, 
to this assertion, that in fact there was no real Bear 
Flag war, only some pillage and skirmishing, we should, 
indeed, have to admit the objection, but should, in re- 
ply, leave it to the reader to modify accordingly his 
conception of the Thucydides. But the history, the 
" Treasure Forever," appeared, at all events, for the 
first in Semple's " Californian." 1 It was used by Ed- 
win Bryant in his well-known book, and it has later 
passed in part into the county histories and other great 

1 I know it in its republished form in the Californian for May 29, 
1847 (San Francisco Pioneers' Librarj* file). See, for Bryant's sum- 
mary and quotation of it, his What I saw in California, p. 286, sqq. 



64 CALIFORNIA. 

authorities on California annals. Dr. Semple himself 
returned with the convoy of the prisoners to Sutter's 
Fort, but his inner consciousness was quite adequate to 
the lofty story of the Sonoma doings, whenever his hon- 
est eyes happened to give him no information. 

Dr. Semple, in his account, felt "justified in saying 
that the world has not hitherto manifested so high a de- 
gree of civilization." For the Bear Flag party was at 
first "without officers or the slightest degree of organ- 
ization, and with no publicly declared object," and yet 
it did no wrong. This, of course, is the kind of disor- 
ganized and unconscious filibustering that is always asso- 
ciated with the highest civilization, and one is prepared 
to follow the good-hearted doctor in his further asser- 
tion that the watchword of all the party was " equal 
rights and equal laws." One of the number, indeed, as 
we learn from Dr. Semple himself, interpreted this 
watchword very naturally, I fancy, but a little hastily, 
by proposing to make a fair and equal division of the 
spoils found at Sonoma ; " but a unanimous indignant 
frown made him shrink from the presence of honest 
men, and from that time forward no man dared to hint 
anything like violating the sanctity of a private house 
or private property." Dr. Semple is, in this assertion, 
doubtless right; as, after he himself left for Sutter's 
Fort, hints were quite superfluous. The intentions and 
the methods used were, of course, perfectly honest ; as 
some have stated the case, one " borrowed supplies on 
the faith and credit of the Bear Flag government," a 
" degree of civilization " that, to be sure, was not quite 
unprecedented. But then, as we see, divinely author- 
ized as their business was, the Bear Flag men could not 
expect to be fed by the ravens, nor to gather pots of 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 65 

manna on the already dry and yellow summer hills 
about Sonoma. The motives which prompted them 
were, as Dr. Semple says of Merritt's individual mo- 
tives, 1 "too high, too holy," to permit them "for a mo- 
ment to suffer private feelings to bias " them " in public 
duties." "Their children, in generations yet to come, 
will look back with pleasure upon the commencement of 
a revolution carried on by their fathers upon principles 
high and holy as the laws of eternal justice." But, this 
being so, it was morally required that fathers, for the 
sake of posterity, should take good care of their own 
health. And the " credit " of the Bear Flag govern- 
ment was both necessary and (in view of the absence of 
weapons and pugnacity among the good people of the 
Sonoma district) sufficient to supply what was needed 
for this purpose. 

Dr. Semple never recovered from his admiration for 
the heroic civilization of the Bear Flag republic. In 
later times he liked to re-tell the story to the innocent 
new-comers of the gold period ; and he sincerely hoped 
to reach at least the governorship of California by vir- 
tue of the halo of glory in which he saw, both the great 
" revolution " at Sonoma, and himself as once an hum- 
ble servant of the Bear Flag state. In fact, only a year 
later, when he was Fourth of July orator at San Fran- 
cisco, the great events of this brief period inspired him 
to say, with becoming long-armed gestures, and to print, 
later, in the " Calif ornian," just as I here quote them, 
certain burning words that must not be forgotten : "If 
we conquer country, we have no prince to claim it, or 
to dictate laws for its rule ; no tyrant hand is laid 
upon them, but the glorious American eagle spreads her 

i See, in Bryant, p. 290. 
5 



6Q CALIFORNIA. 

balmy wings over even a conquered people, and affords 
them protection and freedom. . . . Tyrants trembled 
on their thrones, and wrong and oppression is hiding 
their deformed heads." x 

But small states are noted for their large proportion of 
great men, and when Dr. Semple went back to Sutter's 
Fort there was left behind at Sonoma a second statesman, 
of equal native genius, but of less sunny temperament, 
to adorn the Bear Flag republic. This was William Ide. 
Providence evidently meant this man to typify for us, 
even more than Dr. Semple could do, our national tal- 
ent and mission for civilizing the benighted Spanish- 
American peoples of this continent. His career, indeed, 
was short, and was happily marked by no violent atro- 
cities of his own choosing ; and, in so far, he is not 
typical. But he had the same characteristic and deli- 
cate appreciation of human rights and duties which 
promised so much success to us, at that time, in our 
efforts to do good to our neighbors. He had all our 
common national conscience ; he was at heart both 
kindly and upright, like the great doctor : and, like the 
doctor again, he was an idealist of the ardent and ab- 
stract type. He differed from Dr. Semple chiefly in a 
curious intensity of inner life that forbade him, save on 
rare occasions, to speak his whole mind. His fellow- 
men generally misunderstood him, and he resolutely 
bore with their misunderstandings, and expressed his 
willingness to forgive them. But he forsook none of 

i Califomian for July 10, 1847. In the rival Yerba Buena paper, 
the Star, a correspondent failed not to notice the humorous side of 
this scene : Dr. Semple as orator, his great form half bent over his 
manuscript, his back turned on the ladies of the audience, and his 
eloquence unchecked by grammatical considerations. Star for July 
17, Bancroft Library file. 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 67 

his fixed notions, and the plainest trait about him was 
his obstinacy. People called him a Mormon ; but that 
story was false. He was at the time of this affair not 
very young, having been born about 1796. 

His life has been sketched, and his own account of 
his connection with the Bear Flag affair printed, by his 
family, not very long since, in a privately circulated 
book, of which I first consulted a copy at Mr. Bancroft's 
library. 1 He was a native of Rutland, Massachusetts, 
had spent his youth in Vermont, and, later, had lived 
in the West, as farmer, school-teacher, and carpenter. 
He had met with some adversities of fortune, which had 
turned him, in religion, from a transient love of Univer- 
salism back to Orthodoxy ; he had been active some- 
times as peacemaker in Western land disputes, but he 
had had no practical experience in political business. 
To California he went with the emigration of 1845. In 
the mountains he did what gained him, later, some tra- 
ditional fame among the emigrants, — dragging his 
wagons, one by one, up and over a place on the Truckee 
route that less obstinate men had supposed wholly inac- 
cessible for wheeled vehicles. In 1846, after a tedious 
winter, he and his family went on to a farm compara- 
tively high up in the Sacramento Valley, and that very 
spring the reports began to be circulated among these 
northern settlers that Castro was coming to drive all 

1 I have since bought a copy of this still uncommon book, which 
surely deserves a wide circulation. It has three separate titles, all 
long, the principal one beginning : A Biographical Sketch of the Life 
of William B. Ide, with a minute and interesting account of, etc. 
(the whole forming an "old-fashioned title-page, such as presents a 
tabular view of the volume's contents"). The copyright is dated 
1880, and the book is said to be "published for the subscribers," 
place not mentioned. Ide's personal narrative begins with chap. ix. 
p. 100, and ends with chap. xvi. on p. 206. 



68 CALIFORNIA. 

Americans out of the land. Ide hastily set out, " stirred 
to the quick," as one family account has it, 1 and joined 
the first party that went to Sonoma. 

Yet, before setting out for Sonoma, Ide had been 
among those settlers who went to Captain Fremont's 
camp, on hearing the alarming rumors, in order to get 
his help. The answers of the captain had seemed to Ide's 
sturdy and untutored soul vague and not strictly moral. 
The captain seemed, he declares, to want the settlers to 
do some aggressive, warlike deed, and, in particular, 
to steal certain horses, and thus to provoke Castro to 
hostility. Thus, also, when the Mexican War should 
begin, the settlers would, according to Ide's understand- 
ing of the plan, have had some part in hastening the 
conquest. This whole plot, desiring the settlers to an- 
ticipate hostilities under United States instigation, but 
without any open and immediate violation of neutrality 
from Captain Fremont's own party until the thing 
should be under way, seemed to Ide's honest wit unin- 
telligible, especially if, as he sincerely thought, Castro 
had really made this terrible threatening proclamation, 
and was soon coming in force. As he understood the 
thing, it was simple self-defense. If the settlers, then, 
could not be helped by Captain Fremont as an officer of 
the United States, the captain might at least remain 
quiet, and let the settlers so do their duty as independ- 
ently to earn their political freedom. With the tak- 
ing of the horses Ide had no part. He heard distinctly 
that Captain Fremont meant to go East at once, after 
getting supplies ; and when, later, he heard that the 
horses were taken, and that a party was now setting out 
for Sonoma, he joined it, no doubt with the full inten- 
i Op. tit. p. 62. 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 69 

tion, in case a proper opportunity should offer, of doing 
his share to make it, not a part of some dark plot to get 
the land for the United States government, but a move- 
ment for " national independence." He hated Captain 
Fremont's scheme of what Ide somewhat cleverly calls 
"neutral conquest." This, by the way, is the only 
clever phrase of Ide's known to me. 

But, as even Ide felt, the first blow having been 
struck, men must, if possible, work together, and sus- 
pend their quarrels. Cheerfully he would follow any 
recognized leader, in so far as that was necessary to se- 
cure American rights. Therefore, on the way down to 
Sonoma, it was generally deemed best not to broach the 
subject of independence. Nobody, Ide tells us, knew 
exactly what they were to do, save that it was to be 
something that would yet further anger Castro, that it 
was not to involve " unnecessary violence," and that it 
included the seizure of prominent men at Sonoma. In 
the early morning of the 14th General Vallejo's resi- 
dence was surprised and surrounded 1 by the assailants. 
After some parley, Merritt and Semple entered, with 
one Knight as interpreter. Vallejo greeted them cor- 
dially, invited them to explain the objects of the party 
and to draw up articles of capitulation, which he in his 
defenseless position as quiet resident on his own estate 

1 Baldridge, in his statement, B. MS., says of this scene : " When 
the general became fully aware of their presence, he went out and 
asked what they wanted, to which no one answered, for the good rea- 
son, I believe, that none of the*m knew what reply to give. He then 
asked them if they had taken the place, to which he was answered in 
the affirmative. He then returned to his room, but soon reappeared 
with his sword girded on, which he offered to surrender to them; but 
as none of the party manifested any disposition to receive it, he re- 
turned to his room again and replaced the sword." All this well fits 
in with Ide's narrative at this point. See Ide, p. 124, op. cit. 



70 CALIFORNIA. 

would gladly sign. 1 Meanwhile he produced something 
to drink, Ide tells us, and the high commissioners tar- 
ried long. The company outside, whose "high and 
holy " aspirations were not yet, like Semple's within the 
house, fortified for the day by anything comforting, be- 
came impatient, and chose one Grigsby as captain, who 
entered, and was likewise long lost to view. At last 
Ide's moment came, and he, the incorruptible, ventured 
within the enchanted dwelling, elected by acclamation 
to inspect the negotiations. He found all the high con- 
tracting parties moderately drunk, and still poring over 
the written articles of capitulation that Vallejo, as he 
implies, must have arranged very much to suit himself. 
Ide indignantly seized them, and rushed forth to read 
them to the company outside. This aroused Grigsby 
and the others with Vallejo, who knew, after all, well 
enough, no doubt, what Captain Fremont had privately 
instructed them to do with General Vallejo, and who, 
shortly afterwards, although not without a pretense of 
hesitation, announced their intention to go back to Sut- 
ter's Fort with the chief prisoners. 2 At this point, how- 
ever, questions began to arise among the party : " By 
what authority are we, after all, here ? and has Captain 
Fremont, or anybody else, authorized in writing the ar- 

1 These details, otherwise known, are rather implied than expressed 
in Ide's narrative. 

2 Vallejo's articles of capitulation, by which, as I understand the 
matter, he seems to have intended to secure to himself personal lib- 
erty, on condition of his promise to engage in no hostilities against 
the party, were thus promptly rejected by the somewhat confused 
brains of the commissioners themselves as soon as they reflected ; and 
thus some good drinks were wasted. Here again one sees a "degree 
of civilization " not quite unprecedented. Vallejo, in the sequel, bit- 
terly complained of this, which he chose to consider broken faith. 
I gather these facts from B. MS. evidence. 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 71 

rest of these men ? " Merritt and Grigsby would give 
no satisfactory answer. Semple, we may suppose, was 
probably absorbed in the glorious contemplations natural 
to a man in his position, not to say condition. Ide 
gives us a fine picture of the confusion that soon began 
to prevail among the heroes as they considered this 
topic, and found, after all, no clear answer. 1 " One 
swore he would not stay ; another swore we would all 
have our throats cut ; another called for fresh horses ; 
and all were on the move, — every man for himself." 
The moment was Ide's, and he seized it, and henceforth he 
gained that consciousness of historical significance which 
inspires all his honest, sober, and infinitely absurd tale. 
He came boldly forward, speaking plainly. He would 
lay his bones here before he would run like a coward. 
What were they there for ? Was it not for some truly 
worthy object, namely, after all, independence ? Nay, 
said he : " we are robbers, or we must he conquei*ors." 
This remark of Ide's narrowly escaped being clever ; but 
it was not. It was only the outburst of his honest anxiety 
to be and do something noble and wondrous. "The 
speaker, in despair, turned his back upon his receding 
companions." The crisis was soon past. They rallied, 
and, as he says, elected him captain on the spot. The 
convoy of the prisoners returned to Sutter's Fort, and 
he remained with his gallant men on the conquered ter- 
ritory. 

As for what followed, we must take the reader a little 
into confidence, before going with Ide's tale yet another 
step, by quoting again from Mr. Baldridge, who remem- 
bers the thing thus, in his B. MS. : " Ide was a strong, 
active, energetic man, and, in our judgment, was pos- 
i Op. eft., p. 127. 



72 CALIFORNIA. 

sessed of many visionary if not Utopian ideas. . . . 
Consequently, within a short time he was the most un- 
popular man among us. . . . Finally he was seized 
with a fit of writing, which continued almost incessantly 
for several days, all the time keeping his own counsel." 
Mr. Baldridge does not remember that Ide was consid- 
ered by his fellows as in any sense captain, until after 
this writing fit had borne fruit, when Ide called a meet- 
ing, read his famous proclamation, announced his plan, 
and was then indeed elected by acclamation, but only 
because everybody chose to regard the whole thing, for 
the moment, as a good joke, and because nobody fore- 
saw the consequence that would follow, in the distribu- 
tion of this play-captain's document broadcast through 
the land, as the programme of the Bear Flag repub- 
lic. 

Ide's memory, however, is different, being especially 
colored by his notions of what captaincy and a govern- 
ment were. As a born statesman, he had his views 
about the true ideal state Equal rights would of 
course prevail in it. And to this end, in the first place, 
there should be in the ideal state now about to be born 
no taxation of the " virtuous, industrious, self-governing 
free men," and all compulsory taxation should therefore 
be inflicted upon criminals, who were not on that ac- 
count, however, to be considered as receiving any license 
for crime. Furthermore, public servants should be 
paid only just enough to keep them free from the effects 
of the love of money ; how much this salary would 
amount to Ide never precisely computed. And, as a still 
more important requisite of good government, there 
should be no compulsory military or other service to 
maintain the cause of liberty : " for that [namely, com- 



THE SECRET MISSION AND TEE BEAR FLAG. 73 

pulsion] would prove that its people were unworthy of its 
blessings, or that those blessings were no longer worth 
enjoying." 1 A government whose subjects were thus 
free to do just as they liked, save when they were 
guilty of actual crime, and whose criminals, meanwhile, 
had therefore to fear only an authority that possessed 
no possible means of compelling any virtuous subject to 
join in a legal suppression of crime, in short, a govern- 
ment by general good humor, was of course best repre- 
sented by this Bear Flag republic itself, with its slowly 
increasing population of from twenty - five to fifty or 
sixty faithful and straggling subjects, no one of whom, 
save Ide, was really quite aware of the very existence 
of his country. And its government was indeed well 
represented by Ide himself, whom nobody exactly knew 
to be governor. As he tells us : " By the unanimous 
vote of the garrison, all the powers of the four depart- 
ments [of government] were conferred, for the time 
being, upon him who was first put in command of the 
fort ; yet Democracy was the ruling principle that set- 
tled every measure, Vox Populi our rule." 2 Of this 
statement we may say that the unanimous vote of the 
garrison undoubtedly did confer not only on Ide, but on 
every man alike, the powers of the four departments, 
namely, as concerned his own person ; and there was 
only a general agreement to drill in company, under 
certain chosen officers, of whom one was Lieutenant 
Ford, soon to be further mentioned. So far Ide was 
right. These " self-consecrated victims to the god of 
Equal Rights" dwelt thus in peace together, and further- 
more, according to Ide, considered what they might do 
to distinguish themselves in any external way from a 
i Op. cfc,p. 145. 2 Page 134. 



74 CALIFORNIA. 

band of marauders. The raising of the Bear Flag was 
one device. Ide himself proposed also the issuing of a 
proclamation, but the populace of the republic, expect- 
ing Captain Fremont soon to interfere, were unwilling 
to authorize this ; and hence Ide's democratic earnest- 
ness and candor in shutting himself up and writing 
(very secretly, as he supposed, and during the small 
hours of several successive nights) that particular 
Vox Populi which he afterwards undertook to circu- 
late through California. Writing this proclamation in 
thirty or forty copies, nearly though not quite identical 
in wording, helped to wear out Ide's constitution, and, 
as his family declare, hastened in later years his death. 
Ide also wrote to the American naval commanders on 
the coast, not for assistance, but, as he in substance de- 
clares, to warn them to let the new republic alone in its 
inalienable rights. Nor was this all. The great plan 
of Ide's free government must be got into the minds of 
the benighted native Californians of the Sonoma dis- 
trict. And one of Ide's earliest acts was directed to 
this end. For reasons of prudence, and others, easily 
comprehensible, the Bear Flag party had seen fit, forth- 
with, to arrest a good many of the native citizens there- 
abouts, and to crowd them into what Ide calls the " cal- 
aboose." How consistent this was with the " high and 
holy " aims of the " revolution " Ide was fully able to 
show. The inhabitants having been thus collected " be- 
tween four strong walls," since " they were more than 
twice our number," Ide entered with an interpreter, and, 
as he says, using the third person himself, " he went on 
to explain [to them] the cause of our coming together ; 
our determination to offer equal justice to all good citi- 
zens ; that we had not called them there [that is, to the 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 75 

i calaboose '] to rob theni of their liberty, nor to de- 
prive them of any portion of their property, nor to dis- 
turb their social relations with one another, nor yet to 
desecrate their religion. He went on to explain to 
them the common rights of all men, and showed them 
that these rights had been shamefully denied them by 
those heretofore in authority . . . that we had been 
driven to take up arms in defense of life and the com- 
mon rights of man." " He went on further to say 
that although he had for the moment deprived them of 
that liberty which is the right and the privilege of all 
good and just men, it was only that they might become 
acquainted with his unalterable purpose." In short, he 
declared that he intended to give them fair warning ; to 
let them sign a treaty of peace if they would ; nay even, 
if they insisted steadfastly upon being enemies, to let 
them go again and prepare themselves for the battle, 
which he referred to with " all the fierce, determined 
energy of manner that such an emergency was calculated 
to inspire." But first he must teach them, by this stay 
in the calaboose and by this lecture, what the inaliena- 
ble rights of man are, and what he and his friends pro- 
posed to do. " We are few," he said, "but we are firm 
and true." x 

The address, Ide confesses, "was not the twentieth 
part interpreted ; " " yet the importance of success in 
the measure, to persons circumstanced as we were, gave 
expression that would have been understood by every 
nationality and tongue under heaven ; and the Spaniard, 
even, embraced the commander as he pronounced the 
name of Washington. There was a glow of feeling 
beaming from his [that is, from the ' Spaniard's '] eye 

i Op. c»*.,p. 134. 



76 CALIFORNIA. 

that defied all hypocracy [sic], as he said, ' Suffer my 
companions to remain until we complete a treaty of 
peace and friendship, and then go and come as friends, 
only that we be not required to take arms against our 
brethren.' " 

The scene, in its way, is a monumental work of poor 
Ide's unconscious art. The pathos of this Yankee car- 
penter's prematurely aged vanity, as it expresses itself, 
years later, in these ardent and proud reminiscences ; 
the obvious honesty and kind-heartedness of his pur- 
poses ; the picture of a fool's glory that he so well paints ; 
the impotent nonsense that, as he speaks, his winged 
words convey in vain to the puzzled interpreter, and 
that these sleepy, impassive, bewildered countrymen of 
Sonoma, with their great soft black eyes fixed upon 
him, helplessly feel to mean some fearful threat of the 
heretic robbers from the Sacramento Valley, — all this 
scene is so perfect in itself, and, after all, so terribly rep- 
resentative, that one cannot easily forget it. One can 
but speak for himself, and, for my part, if ever I hear in 
future of our great national mission on this continent as 
civilizers of the Spanish- American peoples, if ever I find 
that this mission has come once more, as it surely some 
day will come, to the surface of our vainglorious na- 
tional consciousness, I shall be able to think of nothing 
but poor Ide, the self-appointed Yankee captain of a 
chance crowd of marauders, standing benevolently in the 
" calaboose," before the forty or fifty innocent and im- 
prisoned citizens of Sonoma, and feeling in his devout 
kindliness that he does God service, while he bellows 
to* them an unintelligible harangue, " not a twentieth 
part interpreted," about man's inalienable rights to lib- 
erty and eqxiality, and while he concludes with a refer- 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 77 

ence to Washington, believing himself, meanwhile, to be 
the Father of the Bear Flag Republic. 

The proclamation was erelong, without any distinct 
disavowal on the part of the Bear Flag men, sent abroad 
by messengers in the land south of San Francisco Bay. 
It has been printed frequently since, and is usually 
thought to be the real official expression of the move- 
ment. The movement, however, could have had no 
one expression, since it had no one purpose, but com- 
prised whatever chanced to result from the original in- 
stigation of Captain Fremont, and from the individual 
minds of the settlers concerned. The proclamation as- 
serted that Castro had ordered the Americans out of the 
country, and had threatened their lives and property, 
and the lives of their families. It attributed to the past 
government vast wickedness and mischief, and it prom- 
ised great blessings from the new government. It sug- 
gested Ide's peculiar political ideas, and it made the 
usual devout appeal to Heaven, which, if marauders and 
insurgents in their official expressions are to be believed, 
favors nothing so well at any time as a general scrim- 
mage, and the side that begins the same. 1 

Ide was, on the whole, a character that can well be 
compared to no creation in literature that I happen to 
know about, save to the Bellman, in the Hunting of the 
Snark. Of the Bear Flag party, whose '- high and 
holy " aims somewhat resemble the aims of the Snark 
hunters, Ide was captain, very much in the sense in 

1 See for one copy of the proclamation op. cit., p. 138. It is easy 
to find some one of the copies of Ide's proclamation printed in books 
on California history. See Bryant's What I Saw in California, p. 
290 ; The Annals of San Francisco, p. 92. None of the standard 
authorities shows any proper sense of the real significance and insig- 
nificance of this paper. 



78 CALIFORNIA. 

which the Bellman was captain of his resolute band. As 
the whole of the Bellman's notion for crossing the ocean 
consisted in ringing his bell, so Ide, toiling in the small 
hours over his proclamations, had similarly simple no- 
tions about sailing the ship of state. As the Bellman on 
occasion referred to maxims " tremendous but trite," so 
Ide's proclamation contains several such references. 
Ide was in fate more like the Baker, in that his Snark 
was undoubtedly a Boojum, and in that he accordingly, 
in due time, softly, if not quite silently, vanished away. 
But as to character, he was a perfect expression, only 
in Yankee form, of the Bellman ; and I consider Ide's 
own account of himself an indirect and unconscious trib- 
ute to the poetical genius of " Lewis Carroll," who has 
so perfectly and undesigningly immortalized just his 
type of wisdom. 1 

While Ide governed, Lieutenant Ford made war. 
The little military incidents of these days, important not 
in themselves, but in their consequences, are easily to be 
summarized. The Californian government actually had 
no force north of the Bay of San Francisco at the be- 
ginning of the affair. But what could be collected 
farther south was promptly sent, under the command 
of Joaquin de la Torre, whose approach became known 
at Sonoma June 23d. Lieutenant Ford, the military 

1 I have space only to refer to yet other monumental passages of 
Ide's narrative: his noble efforts to get the poor alcalde of Sonoma to 
understand the aforesaid philosophical theory of the projected Bear 
Flag Constitution (p. 147), and his difficulties with those of his own 
garrison who "earnestly contended that a Spaniard had no right to 
liberty, and but very little right to the enjoyment of life " (p. 148). 
One of the most engaging things in the volume before us is further- 
more the innocent admiration with which the editors of Ide's narrative, 
in their entire ignorance of the facts, regard the wildest of his honest 
absurdities. 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 79* 

leader of the Bears, marched out with a little force to 
meet him ; and an encounter took place about twelve 
miles from San Rafael. The Californians lost two men 
killed, and some wounded, at the very first fire, and, 
dreading the rifles of the 'Bear party, retired without 
further struggle. They were of course in no wise well 
armed. Thus was shed the first blood in " battle " be- 
tween Americans and Californians. The Bear men 
received here no hurt. After this skirmish the maraud- 
ing settlers at Sonoma were in comparative safety, as 
no force could for some time be brought against them. 
But Captain Fremont, who had received news of their 
danger, reached Sonoma with his whole force on June 
25th. Although his instigation had begun the insur- 
rection, he was not to win any special military renown 
in this first part of the conquest ; for the Californian 
force, which he now actively pursued, cleverly eluded 
hira by a ruse, and escaped across the bay. De la 
Torre, namely, sent a false message, purporting to be 
from Castro, and announcing an imminent attack upon 
Sonoma. This, sent in the hands of an Indian, fell, as 
was intended, into Captain Fremont's possession, and 
led him back from his pursuit to protect the threatened 
town. De la Torre had time to cross to Yerba Buena 
before the mistake was discovered. A detachment of 
Captain Fremont's men later crossed the bay to Yerba 
Buena, took prisoner the captain of the port, spiked 
some guns at the presidio, and returned. 

These irregular hostilities must, we have said, be 
judged by their effects, and, as we now yet further add, 
by the effects which chance later warded off, but which 
for the moment seemed imminent. The whole country 
towards the south, as far as the tale penetrated, was 



80 CALIFORNIA. 

alarmed and exasperated at the news, which was, of 
course, naturally exaggerated in the telling. It was not 
that the physical mischief done had actually been enor- 
mous, but that the injustice of the attack seemed to 
the native population so o*bvious, and the designs indi- 
cated by it so appallingly dangerous to their happiness 
and their rights. The mystery of the affair made it 
worse. Ide's proclamation was circulated in manuscript 
form south of the bay, and that pretended to announce 
a new independent republic. But Captain Fremont's 
name was quickly associated by rumor and fact with the 
business, which was therefore believed to be the out- 
come of American official intrigue. An irregular guer- 
rilla warfare appeared certain. If the Americans were 
treacherous enough to seize Sonoma without warning, to 
deliver over its inhabitants to confinement and their 
property to marauders, what were they not capable of 
doing further? The worst that unfriendly suspicion 
could have feared of the new-comers now seemed re- 
alized. The longing, among those of the Californian 
politicians who desired English protection, for an imme- 
diate English interference on their behalf, waxed very 
strong at the news ; and there can be little doubt that, 
if fortune had delayed the outbreak of the Mexican 
War, or the coming of the news of it, but a little longer, 
and had thus delayed the interference of the American 
fleet, the English commander of the Juno, on the Cal- 
ifornia coast, or possibly Admiral Seymour himself, of 
the Collingwood, who arrived during July, and who, for 
all we know, might have arrived almost or quite as soon 
in any case, would have been the object of overtures 
from prominent men for an acceptance on the part of 
his government of a protectorate of California, which 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 81 

might then have declared its independence of Mexico. 
Whether these overtures would have been supported 
or not by the body of the distracted Californians, and 
whether any English commander would have been jus- 
tified at that time by his government in accepting such 
proposals, or whether our navy would have passively 
permitted the thing, are matters that belong not yet to 
our tale. We mention thern now only to suggest that, 
in case there was, as a well-known tradition will have it, 
an imminent English plot to get possession of Califor- 
nia, the irregular revolution instigated by Captain Fre- 
mont was the best possible means that could have been 
chosen to frighten and to plague the Californians into 
the arms of England at once. Somewhat suspicious 
seems, therefore, this well-known tradition, when it re- 
peats from volume to volume and from decade to dec- 
ade the thoughtless assurance that the Bear Flag affair 
saved California from the rapacity of England. But of 
the tradition and the truth about this matter we shall 
hereafter speak further. 

Meanwhile, as we must add, to explain in part the 
undying hatreds that grew out of this unhappy Bear 
outbreak, these hostilities did not pass by without some 
of the natural attendants of such affairs. Early in the 
days at Sonoma, two of the Bear Flag men, Cowie and 
Fowler, were taken prisoners by an irregular party of 
Californians, and then murdered. Stories, whose foun- 
dation, as it appears, cannot be tested with certainty, 
because the records of trustworthy eye-witnesses are 
lacking, are to be found, as most readers know, in the 
later American accounts, attributing to these irregular 
Californians not only the murder, but also the previous 
torture, of these two men. I fancy that we must regard 
6 



82 CALIFORNIA. 

the affair, at all events, as a sort of lynching, and must 
judge it by remembering how our Western farmers 
would have treated any marauding Mexicans who had 
been caught after they had assailed defenseless Ameri- 
can towns and robbed peaceful inhabitants. Our West- 
ern lynchers often torture as well as kill. But this act, 
surely in no sense justifiable, however natural the furi- 
ous exasperation of the assailed Californians may have 
made it at the moment, was far outdone by men among 
the Americans, who, during Captain Fremont's pursuit 
of Torre to San Rafael, murdered, in cold blood, near 
that place, three defenseless non-combatants, men of 
known respectability, and of no connection with the 
hostilities. These were the Haro brothers and Berey- 
essa. The act was causeless, and can receive no shadow 
of justification, and it was not done by any irregular 
party. As to the responsibility I have nothing to add. 

Very happily this scene of the Bear Flag war was 
closed before further bloodshed could follow, by the 
coming of news of hostilities on the Rio Grande, and 
by the consequent raising of the American flag by Com- 
modore Sloat at Monterey. The latter had left Mazat- 
lan on the first receipt of this news, had come in his 
flag-ship to join his vessels that were already on the 
coast, and, in obedience to his previously received of- 
ficial instructions, had prepared to seize upon Monterey 
and San Francisco harbors. He had indeed hesitated 
some days at Monterey without action, but on July 7th 
the deed was done. Sloat thereupon sent orders to the 
Portsmouth at San Francisco to seize that port, and dis- 
patched a courier to convey intelligence of his acts to 
Captain Fremont, who, having nobody to fight on the 
north shore of the bay, had returned for the time with 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 83 

his main force to Sutter's Fort. As soon as the courier 
reached the captain, the latter set out for Monterey 
with his force. And thus the operations of the Bear 
Flag affair became merged in those of the conquest 
proper. 

Yet, ere bidding farewell to the conquerors of the 
fortress of Sonoma, we must call attention to one doc- 
ument which especially illustrates their " high and holy " 
aims. It was written, indeed, just after the regular 
conquest had been proclaimed, and is the more charac- 
teristic for that. It was written by the redoubtable 
Grigsby, who had been left in command at Sonoma 
under the new order of things, and was addressed to 
Captain Montgomery, in San Francisco Bay. 1 

Cuartel, Sonoma, July 16, 1846. 
To Captain Montgomery, U. S. Ship Portsmouth. 

Dear Sir, — Yesterday I received Lieutenant Bartlett's 
letter. . . . The Spaniards appear well satisfied with the 
change. The most of them have come forward and signed 
articles of peace. Should they take up arms against us, or 
assist the enemy in any way, they forfeit their lives, prop- 
erty, etc. All things are going on very well here at pres- 
ent. . . . There are some foreigners [i. e., Americans or Eng- 
lishmen] on this side that have never taken any part with 
us. I wish to know the proper plan to pursue with them : 
whether their property shall be used for the use of the garri- 
son or not (they are men of property). We wish your advice 
in all respects, as we are a company of men not accustomed 
to such business. . . . There are some poor men here that 
are getting very short of clothing. I wish to know in what 
way it might be procured for them. . . . 

Your obedient servant, 

John Grigsby, Captain. 

i Sen. Ex. Doc. 1, 2d Sess. 29th Congr., p. 665. 



84 CALIFORNIA. 

ni. SLOAT, THE ADMINISTRATION, AND THE MYSTERY 
OF THE SECRET MISSION. 

Such is the outer history of the " Bear Flag Revolu- 
tion." But we must enter into more details before we 
can hope to find, the true interpretation of the move- 
ment. 

So much, however, is to be noted, ere we proceed, as 
to the relation of the movement to Sloat's action. 
Events seemed to bring the Bear Flag affair into close 
connection with the official conquest proper. But we 
should blunder sadly if we supposed that Sloat had 
been in any case instructed to cooperate with Captain 
Fremont or with the settlers, or that the Bear Flag 
affair was in any sense an official signal for the inter- 
ference of our squadron. Of Sloat's instructions we 
shall speak in due time, but they very certainly were not 
framed with any apparent reference to Captain Fre- 
mont's conduct or to Gillespie's mission. Sloat was to 
wait until he should hear from the Atlantic of actual war 
between the United States and Mexico. Then he was 
to seize upon the Californian ports. He had no warn- 
ing that his work was to be lightened by previous armed 
operations on land, and he was in fact sadly perplexed 
by the news that he heard from the north when he 
reached Monterey on the 2d of July. Whatever the 
official secret of Captain Fremont's action was, Sloat 
was not in it. To judge the Bear Flag affair, we must 
then consider it in and for itself, and not in connection 
with its accidental good fortune as an undertaking that 
received a timely support from the navy. The first suc- 
cess that it desired and rightfully might hope to get was 
only a success as an independent and apparently un- 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 85 

official revolution in California. This success once 
reached, California might pass over into our hands 
whenever the war came ; but until the war had been 
formally begun, Captain Fremont had no reason to ex- 
pect the support of his distant government. The navy 
simply knew nothing about his plans, and had no sort of 
authority to help him ; and the wide deserts separated 
him from all possible military support. The boldness of 
such an undertaking, with Captain Fremont's sixty men, 
and with only the doubtful aid of the settlers, must 
surely strike the reader forthwith ; the mysterious care- 
lessness of our government in utterly failing to provide 
for Captain Fremont any effective armed cooperation 
from our squadron must add to our perplexity in case 
this fourth plan actually was the real plan ; and what 
we are hereafter to learn of the official instructions to 
the squadron itself, as they were later printed in congres- 
sional documents, will only make our problem harder. 
But it is at least necessary to remember that the show 
of official support which Commodore Sloat's seizure of 
Monterey would seem to have given to Captain Fre- 
mont was in fact but an accidental outcome of other 
events, and was not in the least contemplated by our 
government in its official instructions to the navy. Nor 
yet may one fancy even that these seemingly independ- 
ent undertakings, namely, Captain Fremont's and Com- 
modore Sloat's, were so well timed by the government 
that, although the official instructions of the squadron 
made no mention of the expected operations on land, 
the actual cooperation of Sloat with the Bear Flag move- 
ment was silently predetermined at Washington. That 
hypothesis, natural as it may so far seem, is absolutely 
excluded by evidence that we shall in due time present. 



86 CALIFORNIA. 

There had been no provision for such cooperation, and, 
if accident had delayed the outbreak of the Mexican 
War a little longer, or if the news had failed to reach 
Sloat when it did, the Bear Flag affair would have de- 
veloped itself into all the natural results of irregular 
warfare, without any support or amelioration through 
the interference of the navy. The settlers, in numerous 
individual cases, if not as a body, would have dealt with 
the Californians after the fashions and customs of irreg- 
ular combatants, and the Californians would have done 
what they could to thwart the rather inadequate force in 
the field against them. One may feel, indeed, fairly 
confident that, with their poor arms and their lack of 
discipline, the Californians could not easily have de- 
stroyed the resolute little Bear Flag army ; but one 
can also feel quite sure that the Bear Flag, in view of 
the small force supporting it and of the bitter passions 
that it at once aroused, could not possibly have given to 
the distracted land peace and good order. The fact 
must be understood, therefore, that if the cabinet au- 
thorized Captain Fremont's operations, it took no sort 
of pains to prevent this province from falling into the 
hopeless anarchy of irregular warfare, until such time as 
the course of events on the remote Atlantic coast should 
have led to the beginning of legitimate war, and the 
news hereof should have been able to reach Sloat's 
squadron. Surely the reader will agree that the prob- 
lem as to how any government could thus risk its own 
most obvious interests becomes not a little puzzling. If 
we were to get California, we surely needed to get it as 
little as possible marred by anarchy, by destruction of 
property, or by the just anger of its inhabitants. Yet 
Captain Fremont's movement, strong enough to begin 



TEE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 87 

an irregular warfare, but certainly not nearly strong 
enough to govern and pacify this immense territory, 
would seem, if the fourth plan is the real one, to have 
been authorized or ordered in Washington, and to have 
been left without any immediate provision for adequate 
support ! Surely something is wrong here. 

iv. the mystery as formerly expounded by 
captain Fremont's friends. 

But possibly, in insisting so exactly as we have done 
upon the consequences and significance of this supposed 
fourth plan for the acquisition of California, we may 
appear to be overlooking a somewhat different hypothe- 
sis as to this Bear Flag affair, an hypothesis whose very 
existence, as we shall later see, enables us better to un- 
derstand the real conduct of Captain Fremont, although 
in itself the hypothesis is utterly unfounded. The 
friends of Captain Fremont, namely, did not, either then 
or later, admit our fourth plan as the sole cause of his 
action. They often used forms of speech that, on the 
one hand, seemed to put more personal responsibility 
for what happened upon the young captain's own 
shoulders, but, on the other hand, made his conduct less 
the result of Gillespie's mission than of the circumstances 
of the place and of the moment. He had to do what 
he did, they have sometimes said, not so much because 
his secret instructions counseled just such acts, as be- 
cause Castro, by warlike movements and threats, forced 
him to take the field to save the American settlers from 
imminent pillage and massacre. We must speak of this 
explanation a little, because it has been so often ad- 
vanced, is so audaciously inaccurate, and is, in conse- 
quence, so instructive. 



88 CALIFORNIA. 

In its first form, the story that the Bear Flag oper- 
ations were forced upon Captain Fremont by the ag- 
gressions of Castro reached the public through Senator 
Benton himself, whose statement was founded upon let- 
ters received at home from the senator's gallant son-in- 
law. The letters themselves were published in the 
" Washington Union," in the autumn of 1846, but have 
somehow come to be almost totally forgotten by the 
public. They are very valuable for us ; yet, as they 
disappeared in the busy life of the moment, and gave 
place to what Senator Benton had found in them, we 
must not reveal their contents just yet, but must repeat 
at this point the curious account, tainted with geograph- 
ical absurdity, which the venerable senator sent out to 
the world as an official statement of Captain Fremont's 
acts and motives. 1 

" At the middle of May," says the senator, " Captain 
Fremont, in pursuance of his design to reach Oregon, 
had arrived at the great Tlamath [Klamath] Lake, in 
the edge of the Oregon Territory, when he found his 
further progress completely barred by the double ob- 
stacle of hostile Indians, which Castro had excited 
against him, and the lofty mountains, covered with deep 
and falling snow. These were the difficulties and dan- 
gers in front. Behind, and on the north bank of the 
San Francisco Bay, at the military post of Sonoma, was 
General Castro assembling troops, with the avowed ob- 
ject of attacking both Fremont's party and all the 
American settlers. Thus, his passage barred in front 
by impassable snows and mountains ; . . . menaced by 

1 I quote in the following Senator Benton's letter as given in 
Cutts, Conquest of New Mexico and California (Philadelphia, 1847), 
p. 152. 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 89 

a general at the head of tenfold forces of all arms ; 
the American settlers in California marked out for de- 
struction on a false accusation of meditating a revolt 
under his instigation ; his men and horses suffering 
from fatigue, cold, and famine ; and after the most 
anxious deliberation upon all the dangers of his position 
and upon all the responsibilities of his conduct, Captain 
Fremont determined to turn upon his pursuers and fight 
them instantly, without regard to numbers, and seek 
safety for his party and the American settlers by over- 
turning the Mexican government in California." 

It is indeed entertaining enough to conceive of Castro 
at Sonoma " menacing " Captain Fremont on the banks 
of Klamath Lake, and " pursuing " him at a distance 
of some three hundred miles in an air line, or more 
than four hundred by the trails, especially when one 
remembers that the country between was for most of the 
way an uninhabited wilderness, for one third of the way 
a mass of mountains, and almost wholly unknown to 
Castro, who had no burning desire, one may be sure, to 
have any close intercourse, not to speak of intrigues, 
with the Klamath Lake Indians. For the rest, Castro 
was himself in fact, not at Sonoma, but alternately at 
Monterey and at Santa Clara, or in their vicinity, all 
through this time, and Sonoma itself was wholly inno- 
cent of any armed force. But, however that may be, 
nobody will now suppose that the gallant young captain 
himself could have felt driven to bay on the Klamath 
shore by the mythical army of ten times his force at 
Sonoma. The venerable statesman's documents and his 
eloquent imagination were, in their combination, for this 
once, a trifle unhistorical. 

But in Senator Benton's " Thirty Years' View," 



90 CALIFORNIA. 

chapter clxiv., the story is once more told. At the 
approach of Gillespie, Captain Fremont, now no more 
driven to bay on the Klamath shores by the overwhelm- 
ing odds at Sonoma, appears in a somewhat different 
light from the one cast upon him by Senator Benton's 
previous account. The situation, although still requir- 
ing Senator Benton's noblest eloquence, is less tragic. 
Although surrounded by hostile Indians, Captain Fre- 
mont is depicted as happy, and as comparatively peace- 
ful in his work until the romantic coming of the brave 
Gillespie. He reads the heavens with his telescope, 
gauges the temperature of the air with his thermometer, 
sketches with his pencil "the grandeur of mountains," 
paints " the beauty of flowers," and with his pen writes 
down " whatever is new or strange or useful in the 
works of nature." In short, he pursues science, shuns 
war, and, if we may add to Senator Benton's eloquence 
a more modern phrase, he shows that his capacity for 
innocent enjoyment is just as great as any other man's. 
But Gillespie came. The letters and messages, with 
their contents, are described much as in the testimony 
before the Claims Committee. But Senator Benton 
adds significantly that " it was not to be supposed that 
Lieutenant Gillespie had been sent so far, and through 
so many dangers, merely to deliver a common letter of 
introduction on the shores of Tlamath Lake," and points 
out that what was communicated bore the " stamp of 
authority." 

While the obvious design of this is once more to give 
to the Gillespie mission a large share in determining 
what followed, Senator Benton still lays stress upon the 
violent measures of Castro, as furnishing at least the 
immediate occasion for Captain Fremont's action. " He 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 91 

[Captain Fremont] arrived," says the senator, "in the 
valley of the Sacramento in the month of May, 1846, 
and found the country alarmingly and critically situated. 
Three great operations fatal to American interests were 
then going on and without remedy if not arrested at 
once. These were : (1.) The massacre of the Americans, 
and the destruction of their settlements, in the valley of 
the Sacramento. (2.) The subjection of California to 
British protection. (3.) The transfer of the public do- 
main to British subjects. And all this with a view to 
anticipate the events of a Mexican war and to shelter 
California from the arms of the United States. The 
American settlers sent a deputation to the camp of Mr. 
Fremont in the valley of the Sacramento, laid all these 
dangers before him, and implored him to place himself 
at their head and save them from destruction. General 
Castro was then in march upon them. The Indians 
were incited to attack their families and burn their 
wheat-fields, and were only waiting for the dry season 
to apply the torch. Juntas were in session to transfer 
the country to Great Britain ; the public domain was 
passing away in large grants to British subjects ; a Brit- 
ish fleet was expected on the coast ; the British vice- 
consul, Forbes, and the emissary priest, Macnamara, 
ruling and conducting everything, and all their plans 
so far advanced as to render the least delay fatal." 
Under these circumstances, which are all thus repre- 
sented as then known to him, Captain Fremont, much as 
he regretted his necessity, had no alternative. " He de- 
termined to put himself at the head of the people and 
save the country." 

Of this account one must first say, in passing, that 
mere dates show the impossibility of any knowledge con- 



92 CALIFORNIA. 

cerning the so-called " Mcnamara scheme " on the part 
of Captain Fremont at the moment of his action, and 
that, whatever these supposed " English schemes " were 
(whereof we shall say much later), they could have had 
no share in authorizing or in hastening the aggression of 
June, 1846. So that all this portion of Senator Benton's 
account is quite without historical significance for our 
present problem, which is simply why Captain Fremont 
moved when he did. 1 We must therefore here dismiss 
these English schemes for the present, and speak of 
them hereafter, as supplying a supposed justification, 
after the fact, for Captain Fremont's energy. 

But the intended massacre of the Americans, and the 
purposed burning of their wheat-fields, — what of all that 
as motive and justification for the hostilities ? The 
only way to solve this problem is to find out in how far 
any genuine knowledge or fear of immediate hostilities 
from Castro was present to well-informed American set- 
tlers. Motive this hostility was for Captain Fremont in 
so far as he believed it to be an immediate source of 
danger. If he had it not in mind as a pressing peril, 
then there is no doubt that the messages brought by 
Gillespie were alone able to furnish valid motive for his 
operations, and then, one would surely suppose, the 
fourth plan will have established itself as the actual 
one. Yet we must not anticipate. At all events, the 

1 With these two accounts of Senator Benton's one should compare 
Captain Fremont's own explanations, the one before the Congressional 
Claims Committee, when he applied for the payment of the expenses 
of the Californian battalion (see Sen. Rep. 75, 1st Sess. 30th Congr., 
pp. 12 and 13), and the other before the Kearny court-martial (Sen. 
Doc. 33, 30th Congr., 1st Sess., vol. v. pp. 373, 374). The two expla- 
nations are both of them cautious, but tend to convey the impression 
that both the secret instructions and Castro's hostility cooperated to 
produce the action. 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 93 

curious tendency just noticed, sometimes to magnify and 
sometimes to leave in ambiguous indefiniteness the im- 
portance of Castro's hostility, suggests that the friends 
of the hero of our tale may well have felt somewhat op- 
pressed by the delicacy and the secrecy of the official 
information that according to the fourth plan would be 
the real motive of his conduct ; so that they may hence- 
forth have felt it their duty to the government to shield 
the latter by cautious and doubtful language. Should 
this in the end appear to be their motive, doubtless the 
reader will appreciate their discretion and their delicate 
patriotism, and will judge them generously. 

V. CALIFORNIA^ HOSTILITY AS A CAUSE FOR, WAR. 

Meanwhile, however, the bare matter of fact whereto 
this reported hostility as a motive for Captain Fremont's 
conduct must be reduced may be investigated under 
two heads. First we may ask whether Castro actually 
did gather any armed force to assail the American set- 
tlers. And secondly we may ask whether the great 
body of peaceable American settlers believed at the mo- 
ment in the imminence of his attack so as to be aroused 
or terrified. To inquire into these matters is not to 
cast a shadow on the just-mentioned discretion and pa- 
triotism that may have forced General Fremont's friends 
ever since to put too strong an accent upon the reported 
hostility of Castro. By our questions as to Castro's 
conduct we shall only put that discretion and that patri- 
otism in a stronger light, in case, indeed, the fourth 
plan actually proves in the end to be the government 
plan, as heretofore we have seemed to find very proba- 
ble. Only in case the fourth plan were not the gov- 
ernment plan should we feel these questions delicate. 



94 CALIFORNIA. 

Well, as to the first of our two questions, the answer 
is very simply a flat negative. Whatever Captain Fre- 
mont's informers may have told him at the time, there 
certainly was no truth in the stories about Castro and 
his anti- American warlike demonstrations. Since Cap- 
tain Fremont's own departure for Oregon in March, 
Castro had made no preparations to drive any Amer- 
icans from the Department. He had issued no procla- 
mation ordering the settlers to be expelled or threaten- 
ing them with expulsion. He was not marching 
against them with an army; he had no force at So- 
noma, none anywhere on the north shore of San Fran- 
cisco Bay. He had no present intention of sending a 
force thither, or of prosecuting in that region any hos- 
tile purpose. He feared, indeed, a coming American 
invasion at some time in the future ; but he knew that 
he could now do little or nothing to avert it, and mean- 
while he was busy in his quarrels with Governor Pio 
Pico and the south. He made some warlike prepara- 
tions ; but they were chiefly against Pio Pico, partly 
with remote reference to possible invasions. He 
plotted ; but the American settlers of the Sacramento 
Valley were not in danger from his plots, nor were they 
the ones plotted against. His controversy with Pio 
Pico, had he been let alone by the Americans, might 
indeed have resulted in an open combat ; but then all 
he would have asked of the Americans for the moment 
would have been neutrality and indifference. Captain 
Fremont's operations were therefore in fact purely ag- 
gressive, and would have been explicable as a defensive 
movement solely on the ground that Captain Fremont 
had been misinformed about Castro. But, as we shall 
also later see, he was not so misinformed by any respect- 
able and trustworthy person. 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 95 

All this is a question of fact, and can easily be decided 
by any one who is now well informed about the situation 
of that moment. Mr. John S. Hittell has spoken quite 
sensibly and plainly on the matter, so far as he goes into 
it at all, in his " History of San Francisco," pp. 102, 
103, where he merely says that the " unmeaning threats of 
a few ignorant native Californians irritated and perhaps 
alarmed the Americans north of San Francisco Bay ; " 
and adds, with regard to Castro's supposed proclama- 
tion, that "the governor of California had issued no 
such proclamation, nor was such a matter " as the forci- 
ble expulsion of the American settlers "thought of." 
Mr. Hittell has long been in a position to judge this 
matter intelligently, although he gives in his book no 
proofs. But the documentary evidence in full concern- 
ing the situation is in Mr. Hubert Howe Bancroft's 
hands. I have no concern in this book with the details 
of the native politics of the moment, and the reader, if 
so disposed, must look for many such tales, as I do my- 
self with a good deal of interest and curiosity, to that 
forthcoming volume of Mr. Bancroft's history which will 
deal with this period, and to Mr. Theodore Hittell's an- 
ticipated discussion of the same period in his forthcoming 
History of California ; yet enough can be shown for our 
purpose by a few considerations. Mr. Thomas Larkin, 
the consul, was busy just then in giving the government 
at Washington every attainable fact about the state of 
the country. He was well acquainted with Jose Castro, 
with the whole town of Monterey, and with all the prom- 
inent Californians. He was, strange to say, engaged 
himself at the moment of the outbreak in intrigues to 
secure — but of that hereafter. Enough, he knew about 
the Californians, by daily intercourse, just what the cap- 



96 CALIFORNIA. 

tain of the surveying party at the Buttes could not know. 
In his voluminous correspondence with the State De- 
partment there is a great deal bearing on the situation 
just at this juncture. By Mr. Bancroft's courtesy, I 
was able, when in California, to examine this correspond- 
ence in the Bancroft library volumes of the archives of 
Larkin's consulate, volumes whose nature the previous 
chapter has described. I have since received, by the 
courtesy of Secretary Bayard, official copies of some 
of these letters, as the originals are preserved in the 
State Department, and I have these copies before me as 
I write. The facts thus shown by Consul Larkin's per- 
sonal and daily knowledge are utterly inconsistent with 
the supposed hostile preparations of Castro. It is quite 
impossible that when all the birds in the Sacramento 
Valley were twittering the news of the approach of 
Castro from bough to bough, and when his proclamation 
was already in the hands of the settlers, these sources 
of information should, although authentic, have pos- 
sessed and delivered news that was sealed to a man who 
was on the spot at the time, in daily personal intercourse 
with the very Californians most concerned themselves, 
and who was on the alert to get information. 

Other documentary evidence in Mr. Bancroft's hands 
shows plainly enough what Castro did mean to do. He 
meant to thwart and defeat Governor Pio Pico in re- 
gard to matters at issue between them. The possibili- 
ties of a future American invasion were indeed known, 
both to him and to Pico, as well as to all the other 
prominent Californians, and fear was felt. Preparations 
were freely discussed and begun, to be ready in time for 
such an invasion if it ever should come. But these 
preparations not only had no immediate reference to the 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 97 

Sacramento Valley settlers, but also were not in an ad- 
vanced state. One lacked, for instance, powder. One 
lacked, above all, money. And one spent one's time 
meanwhile in petty domestic quarrels, such as brought 
one but little nearer to a real state of readiness. At 
such a time, for a busy politician, with plenty of ene- 
mies at home, as it were in his own household, with very 
limited military resources accessible to him, with fears 
for the future, with doubts and native intrigues dark- 
ening the air all about him, — for such a man, who had 
so recently declined to attack Captain Fremont's party, 
now deliberately to undertake to go out into the Sac- 
ramento Valley and borrow yet more trouble at the 
mouths of the settlers' rifles would have been the most 
absurd and impossible of ideas. Only ignorance of the 
real situation could have attributed to Castro any such 
design. It is perfectly certain that he had no such de- 
sign. 

There was then no danger to the settlers from Castro. 
But did the settlers perchance believe, in their own 
minds, however mistakenly, that there was danger ? 
And were their fears the basis of Captain Fremont's 
determination ? 

Mr. Wm. N. Loker, one of the settlers at Sutter's 
Fort, and later an officer in the California Battalion, 
testified before the Claims Committee (see p. 40 of their 
Report) that he actually posted in public sight himself, 
and at Sutter's Fort, a translation of the " banda " 
whereby the authorities ordered all American settlers 
out of the country on pain of a forcible expulsion. 1 

1 Ide preserved a copy, as he tells us, of an unsigned American 
proclamation that was handed to himself on June 8, " between the 
hours of 10 and 11 A. m.," as he very exactly adds. (See the Ide 
7 



98 CALIFORNIA. 

Now, as we have seen, no such " banda " was ever 
officially promulgated at all, and what Loker posted 
must have been, if anything, a forgery. The question 
before us is, Were such forgeries, or other false state- 
ments, whatever their source, actually believed among 
the better informed American settlers ? And did the 
belief of the settlers influence the captain to act ? 
These questions seem to me to admit of a demonstrably 
negative answer. I shall here lay no stress on the 
curiously unsatisfactory nature of the parol evidence on 
this topic that was presented to the congressional com- 
mittee at Washington. It is indeed true that those 
Americans who were in a position to know best about 
the actual state of the Californian public were not the 
men to whom the Claims Committee appealed for infor- 
mation as to the current American belief about the sit- 
uation of the moment of the outbreak ; but then, to be 
sure, not everybody could be got in Washington as a 
witness at just the desired time. One must remark, how- 
ever, in passing, that much of the parol evidence of 
settlers that was produced at Washington is historically 
quite worthless, expressing the vague and not disinter- 
ested views of men who either were in no position to 
understand the facts, or were themselves decidedly in- 
Family Narrative, p. 113.) It read: " Notice is hereby given that a 
large body of armed Spaniards on horseback, amounting to 250 men, 
have been seen on their way to the Sacramento Valley, destroying the 
crops, burning the houses, and driving off the cattle. Captain Fre- 
mont invites every freeman in the valley to come to his camp at the 
Buttes immediately ; and he hopes to stay the enemy, and put a stop 
to his" — ("Here," says Ide, also on p. 113, "the sheet was folded 
and worn in two, and no more is found.") The genuineness of this 
memorandum seems certain. Of course this proclamation itself, who- 
ever wrote it, was utterly false in its statements about the "armed 
band." 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 99 

disposed to let other people understand the facts. But 
such testimony we need not even criticise. Ours ar- 
ranges itself under several heads. 

In the first place, then, well-informed and trustworthy 
settlers, men of property and position at that time, of 
honorable career and notable reputation since, have 
given in more recent times testimony to the point. Es- 
pecially satisfactory is the elaborate refutation of the 
traditional view about Castro's hostility which I have 
before me, as I write, from the pen of Mr. John Bid- 
well, of Chico, Cal., a man whose position then as a 
trusted assistant of Sutter at the fort, and whose resi- 
dence in the country for some years before that date, 
give us good ground for thinking him well informed ; 
while his high public reputation in California ever since 
those times also assures us that we have in him an up- 
right, cautious, and able observer. For Mr. Bancroft's 
library, Mr. Bidwell prepared a lengthy statement, 
which I have used in the former chapter, and which 
also treats of this time. But in addition to this, by the 
kindness of the editor of the " Overland Monthly," Miss 
M. W. Shinn, I have obtained a copy of a MS. now in 
her possession, a part of certain records on early Cali- 
fornia history that Rev. Mr. Willey has lent to her for 
her own use. This MS. answers questions of Mr. Wil- 
ley's, put to General Bidwell, about the Bear Flag 
affair, and is full and definite. It was not at first in- 
tended for print, but for the Rev. Mr. Willey's use. I 
use it, by permission, here. 

For a long time, says Mr. Bidwell, in fact almost ever 
since he reached the country, settlers in the valley were 
accustomed to tell and hear all sorts of wild stories 
about the Californian government and its plans, about 



100 CALIFORNIA. 

coming war, or about some attempted expulsion of 
Americans, or about a fight for independence. These 
rumors would gather, from time to time, a number of 
people at Sutter's Fort, who would talk it all over, and 
again disperse quietly, to be aroused once more in six 
months or a year. Especially the floating population 
of the territory, landless men of no fixed dwelling- 
place, trappers, deserters from ships, often precious ras- 
cals, would enjoy and spread this warlike talk. They 
especially hated all Californians, who well returned the 
hatred. " But these rumors," says Mr. Bidwell, "had 
this effect, Americans had learned to be always on guard. 
They — I mean the more considerate class — had 
learned to weigh signs of danger, and put, to a consid- 
erable extent, a true value on them. Those who had 
property, and had settled in the territory, were gener- 
ally in favor of peace ; while those who had little or no 
interest here were, as a rule, always ready and anxious 
for war." By 1846 these Americans of all classes were 
already too numerous to have any serious fear of being 
driven out, and the Californian leaders were known to 
them as men of too much shrewdness to attempt such a 
movement. 

Mr. Bidwell, in discussing the feeling at the moment 
of the outbreak, then goes on to say that, after Captain 
Fremont's departure for Oregon, in March, " all was 
quiet again." " There were no hostile demonstrations, 
or even threats, to my knowledge. We in the Sacra- 
mento Valley felt entirely secure. Others dispersed 
throughout the country nearer the coast were wholly 
exposed in case of danger, and would have fled to Sac- 
ramento on the least notice. But there was not a whis- 
per of trouble. Americans would surely have given the 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 101 

alarm at Sacramento long before Arce reached there 
with the horses, had Castro intimated, by word or act, 
a purpose to expel them." " Is it not strange," Mr. 
Bid well adds, in another connection, " that if Castro 
was about to make war against American immigrants 
or settlers, and these so excited about it as to ask Fre- 
mont's aid, I should have known nothing about it, and 
been looking for a saw-mill site, with only one man, and 
he proposing to find his way alone to Sonoma ? " Mr. 
Bidwell was at the moment absent from Sutter's Fort 
for two or three days, with Dr. Semple, searching for 
a site for that saw-mill which, when afterwards built, 
was the occasion of the gold-discovery. " The valley," 
when he set out, just before the seizure of Arce's horses, 
" was peace and quiet. No settler, the truth of history 
compels me to say it, had any apprehension of danger. 
I was making ready to start to Los Angeles on business." 
We must indeed remember that Mr. Bidwell is not 
an authority for those settlers who were just then near 
the camp at the Buttes, or directly under Captain Fre- 
mont's or Lieutenant Gillespie's influence, men such as 
later testified before the Claims Committee. That these 
may have had sincere fears in many cases and at this 
time is certain. But Mr. Bidwell is good authority for 
the state of feeling at Sutter's Fort. " There was," 
then, " no excitement, no danger, till Fremont began 
the war by sending the party which attacked Arce, 
captured his horses, and let him and his escort go with 
a defiant message to Castro. If Americans really were 
in danger, is it possible to conceive a more unwise 
thing than the beginning of war at such a time and 
under such circumstances, without giving them notice ? " 
" Therefore," concludes Mr. Bidwell, " I say that Fre- 



102 CALIFORNIA. 

mont, and he alone, is to be credited with the first act 
of war. Truth compels me to say, the war was not be- 
gun in California in defense of American settlers. It 
may be there was a drawn sword hanging over their 
heads, but if so they did not know it, and Fremont 
must have the credit of seeing it for them. Fremont 
began the war : to him belongs all the credit ; upon him 
rests all the responsibility." 

One must carefully limit, as we have tried to do, the 
extent to which Mr. Bidwell is a satisfactory authority. 
He could not know, of course, as much about Castro's 
designs and movements as was known at the camp in the 
north, because he, like the American consul at Monterey, 
was nearer to Castro, and consequently farther from 
the only genuine sources of traditional knowledge about 
Castro than were Captain Fremont's excited informants 
northward at the Buttes, or on Bear River. But Mr. 
Bidwell, in his ignorance, may certainly be supposed to 
represent the state of mind of those average, respectable 
American settlers, who had fixed interests in the coun- 
try, and no extraordinary sources of information about 
the imminent dangers that threatened. As for the evi- 
dence in the claims-pamphlet about the reports at Sutter's 
Fort, Mr. Bidwell's testimony shows how much that is 
worth. 

I have seen, in Mr. Bancroft's collection of state- 
ments, others, of good authority and much value, that 
give the same impression of the situation. 

In the second place, however, as proving that not 
good information of danger, but private purposes of his 
own, led Captain Fremont to act as he did, we have the 
important and demonstrable fact that Captain Fremont 
took no trouble to verify the stories of Castro's hostility 



TEE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 103 

before acting, but, on the contrary, behaved precisely- 
like a man who felt authorized to act on his own initia- 
tive. For there was one person who could have told 
him the truth ; and that was Larkin, with whom, for 
the rest, Gillespie was bound by his own instructions, as 
we shall later see, to keep up a good understanding. 
Yet to Larkin no appeal was made for any information 
whatever on the matter. And if Larkin seemed too far 
away, and if, in his credulous acceptance of false stories, 
Captain Fremont feared to wait long enough to get an 
answer from Monterey, he could equally well have got 
information from Yerba Buena that would have made 
a peaceable leader very loath to act hastily. He did, in 
fact, send Lieutenant Gillespie, for supplies, to San 
Francisco Bay, dispatching him only a week before 
hostilities began. And before Gillespie returned, hos- 
tilities had been begun. These facts forbid us to think 
Captain Fremont desirous of a warrant for his acts in 
any knowledge of Castro's hostility, and show us that 
he was certainly in no sense anxious to know the exact 
truth about the state of the country. 

Of Gillespie's real relation to Larkin at that moment 
we need now only say that it was an important one, 
such as should have insured mutual confidence and cer- 
tainly very good faith and plain speech from Gillespie 
to Larkin. On the other hand, moreover, if Captain 
Fremont was anywhere to learn the real state of the 
country, or the real dangers in which he stood, it surely 
was from Larkin that he might expect authentic infor- 
mation. Now, however, a dispatch from Larkin to the 
State Department, dated June 1, proves that Captain 
Fremont first wrote to Larkin from the Sacramento 
Valley, giving not the least sign of any sense of his own 



104 CALIFORNIA. 

danger, nor the least hint of the supposed danger to the 
settlers, but, on the contrary, saying, in a perfectly un- 
warlike fashion, that he meant to go East at once. Af- 
ter thus writing, and before he could have time to get 
an answer from Larkin, he began his hostilities. This 
is not the conduct of one who has heard reports of the 
hostility of a government with which he is properly at 
peace, and who prudently wants to find out the truth 
and then act accordingly. It is, however, the conduct 
of a man who feels authorized to act quite independ- 
ently, and who chooses to give no sign of his purposes 
to even the most properly interested persons. On June 
1, then, to specify, Larkin 's letter to the State Depart- 
ment says that Larkin has just received an express from 
Gillespie and Captain Fremont, who have returned to 
the Sacramento Valley from Oregon. " Captain Fremont 
now starts for the States. By the courier," he goes 
on, "I received a letter for Hon. Thomas H. Benton, 
which I inclose in this." 1 The letter thus inclosed 
gave Mr. Benton, as we shall see, the same informa- 
tion about the captain's intentions to go East. If, then, 
Captain Fremont's intention to go East was sincere, 
his change of intention that led to the attack before 
he got or could get any reply from Larkin was based 
on a very hasty and ill-conducted examination into the 
mythical warlike preparations of Castro. If, however, 
as is possible, this intention to go East was not sincere, 
but was put into the letter to Mr. Benton and into the 
letter to Larkin far the sake of deceiving any Califor- 
nian into whose hands the letters might perchance fall, 
still the same considerations remain as to the insignifi- 
cance of that supposed hostility of Castro as motive for 
1 This seems to be the letter of May 24. 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 105 

the captain's acts. For whether the attack upon the 
Californians was already determined upon or not, the 
same thing is shown by this Larkin letter ; namely, that 
Captain Fremont took no trouble to learn from Larkin, 
as he might in any case safely and prudently have done, 
whether an assault upon himself and the settlers was 
imminent, and from his side gave to Larkin no hint of 
his own supposed danger. On the contrary, he acted 
precisely like a man with a secret that either could not 
be trusted on paper at all, or, if it could be so trusted, 
still could not be even remotely hinted to the person 
who had the best right to know. 

But our next piece of evidence is absolutely conclu- 
sive. Lieutenant Gillespie, as he testified before the 
Claims Committee (p. 26 of their Report), left Captain 
Fremont's camp on the 28th of May, after the return 
to the Sacramento Valley from the north, and only 
about one week before the seizure of Arce's horses, " to 
proceed to San Francisco to obtain supplies [of food] 
for the men." On the 30th, at Captain Sutter's, he 
learned, as he says, of Castro's expected attack on the 
settlers and on Captain Fremont. The attack, however, 
was not so imminent but that he could go down in a 
launch to San Francisco without fear, expecting to get 
and bring back supplies in no very secret way. He 
" did not reach San Francisco until the 7th." Here he 
got supplies from Captain Montgomery of the Ports- 
mouth, and returned to Sutter's Fort on the 12th. On 
his return he heard of the seizure of Arce's horses. Of 
course, before he set out on this expedition, Gillespie 
must have known, or at least must have suspected, that 
the supplies which he sought were meant not only for 
pressing necessities, but also for an intended war. This 



106 CALIFORNIA. 

war now is to be, according to the self-defense theory, 
something forced upon Captain Fremont by threatened 
hostilities. The knowledge of such impending hostili- 
ties Gillespie shall have brought down to Yerba Buena. 
But here, as it chanced, he talked quite freely with an 
American, who at once wrote a letter, dated June 10, 
from Yerba Buena ; and this was later printed in a 
paper in the Sandwich Islands. 1 The letter begins: 
"There are strange things in this world, happening 
every day, but none to me more so than that I should 
find myself in California, and writing a letter to be 
taken to you by the first overland express, and cer- 
tainly the longest ever attempted in America. A friend 
has kindly volunteered to put this into the hands of the 
gallant Captain Fremont, who is now encamped in the 
Sacramento, and about to proceed directly to the United 
States." This " friend " is evidently Gillespie himself ; 
for the letter-writer goes on to tell how he has just 
heard, from the lips of the very gentleman who brought 
an express to Captain Fremont from the States, of the 
meeting on the shores of Klamath Lake ; of the night 
of danger that followed ; of the Indian attack ; of the 
hair-breadth escape ; and of the return to the Sacra- 
mento Valley. And now the Fremont party are pre- 
paring to return to the States I Plainly, Gillespie well 
kept Ins secret about the coming conflict from his fellow- 
countryman. This is quite intelligible if the plotting 
was going on from the American side, but unintelligible 
if the pressing danger to the American settlers was now 

1 I have the letter before me in the copy made from the Friend 
into the Sandwich Island News, of Honolulu, December 2, 1846, a 
copy which I had the good fortune to find by a mere accident, and, in- 
dependently, in a Harvard College Library file. I do not know for 
what American newspaper the letter was first written. 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 107 

a matter of public knowledge or yet of public report. In 
that case the correspondent surely could not have been 
persuaded to send a letter overland to the United States 
by the hands of Captain Fremont on this mentioned 
information that the latter was at once to leave the 
land, and peacefully. As to the state of the country, 
meanwhile, the correspondent, in his innocence about 
coming events, gives us, through this wholly accidental 
letter, a beautifully unconscious refutation of all stories 
about the fears of the Americans that were well informed. 
For this letter-writer is no friend of the Californians ; 
on the contrary, he speaks ill of them, and hopes that 
" a day of reckoning " may some time come for certain 
supposed old-time injuries. But yet his whole account 
of these people attributes to them a present condition, 
not of dangerous and hostile readiness, but of lazy im- 
potence and inefficiency. The facts that he relates are 
many of them quite inconsistent with any prevalent fear 
of imminent war against any Americans. He says, for 
instance, that Castro is supposed to be quarreling with 
Pio Pico, " but his [Castro's] conduct meets with such 
universal contempt from all classes that he cannot raise 
over forty men now, where a few months ago he ivas 
supreme." This is indeed a formidable army, " of all 
arms," such as Senator Benton tells us of ! The letter- 
writer does indeed know that it is " even reported " that 
Castro is inciting Indians to burn up American wheat- 
fields ; but so little does he lay stress on this mere ru- 
mor that, immediately after repeating it, he adds that 
all Sutter's American laborers have left the fort before 
the harvest time, " and gone to work for themselves, 
taking his cattle to pay the amounts due them" Thus 
people always behave, let the reader remember, in a 
time of dread of imminent " pillage and massacre " ! 



108 CALIFORNIA. 

And so this intelligent observer, some clays after the 
seizure of Arce's horses, but still before the news had 
come of this first cloud of war, had not the least notion 
of impending hostilities, and, after a very free talk with 
Gillespie, only knew that Captain Fremont was about to 
go East, and that there was some rumor about Castro's 
wish that the Indians would burn up American wheat. 
This writer did not know that Castro had threatened 
any armed attack on Americans ; he did not lay the 
least stress on the rumor about the wheat ; and what he 
says shows that there was no general " excitement " of a 
hostile character, such as certain of the Claims Commit- 
tee witnesses pretend to know about, at Yerba Buena or 
anywhere else near the bay. How, if there were, could 
Gillespie be spinning yarns on shore so quietly to his 
countryman, although the bold lieutenant was, in fact, 
already well known at Yerba Buena to be a messenger 
to Fremont and a disguised American officer ? For the 
rest, the same correspondent, in a later letter, after hos- 
tilities had begun, attributes the whole trouble to the set- 
tlers themselves, and considers it their aggression. All 
this, then, shows both the absurdity of the current stories 
in the north, the carelessness of Captain Fremont about 
the actual state of the Californian public mind, and the 
determination of the captain to do his own share of 
plotting. 

Captain Fremont's own letter of July 25, 1846, 1 to 
Senator Benton, the letter on which the venerable sen- 
ator's first account was founded, does indeed assert the 
hostility of Castro as a ground for action, but it gives 
no reason to doubt the validity of the foregoing reason- 
ing. In the first place, it may have been written, as we 
1 See National Intelligencer for November 12, 1846. 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 

shall see, in a sort of private family cipher. If taken, 
however, literally, it implies that Gillespie, who set out 
on May 28, from the camp in the north, to go to Yerba 
Buena for supplies, already knew of Castro's hostility 
and of the captain's purpose, and that officers in the 
United States navy, to whom Gillespie told the news, ap- 
proved openly of the captain's intended course. It also 
implies that the account of their approval brought back 
by Gillespie was one motive of Captain Fremont's final 
action itself, although, to be sure, this action, as it also 
shows, took place before Gillespie's return. It implies 
this inconsistency and several other doubtful matters, 
which may be due to the haste in which the letter was 
written. Imperfect as it thus is for historical uses, this 
letter nevertheless shows plainly enough, if it shows 
anything, that between May 24 and June 6, and without 
waiting for sound advices from even Yerba Buena, Cap- 
tain Fremont resolved of his own will to instigate an at- 
tack on the utterly defenseless Californians north of 
San Francisco Bay, giving as his warrant an entirely 
unfounded report (or pretext) that they were already 
in arm g against himself. Taken in connection with the 
foregoing contemporaneous evidence, this fact must be 
viewed as forever disposing of the notion that Captain 
Fremont could have learned, after careful inquiry from 
any competent persons, that good evidence existed of 
immediate danger from Castro. For the letter itself 
shows that he took no time to make such inquiry. On 
the contrary, we now see clearly that the reports about 
Castro, such as the forged proclamation that Loker 
posted or the paper that Ide saw, issued from some 
source very near to Captain Fremont's own person, and 
that if he himself was deceived about the matter, he 



110 CALIFORNIA. 

took no trouble to avoid such deception, and acted 
wholly without good evidence of danger. In view of 
the above-mentioned evidences that somebody was de- 
cidedly interested in spreading false written reports of 
Castro's intentions, there can be very little doubt re- 
maining as to the actual relation of Captain Fremont 
and Lieutenant Gillespie themselves to the reports that 
are so often said to have justified their aggression. 
Rather must it be hoped that the orders from Washing- 
ton justified the use of these reports. 

Let the reader still not for one moment misinterpret 
our present result. If the fourth plan was the govern- 
ment plan, and was so included in instructions brought 
by Gillespie that Captain Fremont, as a confidential 
officer of the government, could not escape from the 
duty of performing his official trust by carrying out this 
plan, then let the necessary means used be charged one 
and all to the moral responsibility of the government at 
Washington. The morality of such devices is, in such 
cases, obviously an affair for the government, not for 
the confidential agent, to judge. If the Gillespie in- 
structions were so worded as to require this interpreta- 
tion under the circumstances, then all the deception and 
all the aggression used by Captain Fremont must be 
pardoned or even praised, in so far as it all was an 
official act authorized and demanded by his govern- 
ment. And furthermore one must pardon, in that case, 
the aforesaid patriotic delicacy also that led the young 
officer's friends in later times to shield the government, 
by repeating to the American public statements that 
were originally of use in arousing the trappers and 
sturdy vagabonds of the Sacramento Valley. Even if 
such evidences were used before Congress to secure ap- 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. Ill 

propriations for the expenses of the conquest, one may 
still suppose the administration responsible for the some- 
what singular means employed for this end. In case the 
fourth plan was the government plan, it is indeed im- 
possible to hide from ourselves its wantonly aggressive 
and cruel character ; but it is still easy to justify and to 
extol the energy of the spirited agent. So that now all 
still turns for us upon this question : Was the fourth 
plan really the government plan, and did Captain Fre- 
mont's instructions, received from Gillespie, warrant 
and require him to carry it out ? 

VI. THE MYSTERY AS NOW EXPOUNDED BY GENERAL 

FREMONT. 

Students of a scene in history must not be moved 
by personal interests ; but I confess that from a priori 
considerations I was prepared, when I first came to the 
study of this subject, to form a very high opinion of the 
work of the gallant Captain Fremont in the acquisition 
of California ; and later, when facts upon which we are 
soon to dwell had already very seriously affected my en- 
thusiasm, I still turned, with strong hopes of discovering 
new facts that would vindicate him, to General Fremont 
himself for personal explanations. I have not promised 
General Fremont to agree with him in any of my results, 
nor have I assured him of anything but the fairest pos- 
sible statement of his side also in its place in this book, 
along with whatever other facts, opposing or favorable, 
I might learn in connection with the matter. So far, the 
facts here brought forward certainly have seemed to 
make Captain Fremont's responsibility at the moment of 
his action a very serious one, in case he was not fully 
supported by his instructions. He brought war into a 



112 CALIFORNIA. 

peaceful Department; his operations began an estrange- 
ment, insured a memory of bloodshed, excited a furious 
bitterness of feeling between the two peoples that were 
henceforth to dwell in California, such as all his own 
subsequent personal generosity and kindness could never 
again make good. From the Bear Flag affair we can 
date the beginning of the degradation, the ruin, and the 
oppression of the Californian people by our own. In 
all subsequent time the two peoples, as peoples, have 
misunderstood and hated each other, with disastrous 
effects for both, and especially for the weaker. No 
doubt, as we shall later see, some great evils were, under 
the circumstances, inevitable. Yet much of this hatred 
might have been saved, had we come peaceably and open- 
heartedly. We came, as it seemed to them, by stealth, 
and we used unprovoked violence. The memory of this 
led in part to the revolt in the south, and to the blood- 
shed of that conflict ; and so all the rest followed. Un- 
doubted is the personal good-will and generous appre- 
ciation that General Fremont has since shown to many 
native Californians, and the devotion that he later ex- 
hibited to some of their interests. With all that we 
have here nothing to do. His act as aggressor in the 
Bear Flag war began the bitterness. And in that, we 
say, he assumed a very serious responsibility. Now, 
however, we are to see how, from his own point of view, 
he to-day regards this long-past story, and what he now 
feels at liberty to say for his personal justification. 

An interview which I had with General Fremont in 
December, 1884, forms the basis of the present state- 
ment of his side of the matter. I took copious notes 
at the time, submitted them later to General and Mrs. 
Fremont for correction, and have promised them an 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 113 

opportunity to see the proofs of this present version. 
The reader may then feel tolerably sure that, however I 
shall later have to criticise General Fremont's past acts 
or present views, the general's final and definitive ac- 
count of those matters at issue, concerning which I ex- 
pressed my doubts and questions to him personally, is, 
at this point, stated to his own satisfaction in so far as 
it has been possible for me so to state his views. 

In answer to my general questions, at our interview, 
about his purposes in the expedition of 1845-46, Gen- 
eral Fremont replied that his main object was to find 
the shortest route for a future railroad to the Pacific, 
and especially to the neighborhood of San Francisco 
Bay. Yet he was not without other thoughts at the 
time of his departure from the East. For Senator 
Benton, who had long devoted much attention to proj- 
ects of further extension of our territory in the West 
and Southwest, and who, of course, had been deeply 
interested in the previous expedition to California, had 
often talked with the young captain, before the be- 
ginning of this new expedition, concerning the value 
that the territory would have to the United States when- 
ever it should come, as Senator Benton was firmly de- 
termined to have it come, into our possession. War 
with Mexico was already probable. And so, said Gen- 
eral Fremont, " at the time I set out, I felt that op- 
portunity was apt to make probability a certainty, and 
I was determined to be prompt to act upon this feeling, 
and to take advantage of any opportunity to serve the 
country in this way." 

Mrs. Fremont, at this point during the interview, 
kindly added some explanations concerning what she 
knew of the intentions of the government during Cap- 



114 CALIFORNIA. 

tain Fremont's absence on this expedition. After the 
expedition was on its way, she frequently made part in 
consultations between her father and Secretary Buch- 
anan concerning California. Buchanan, as she feels 
sure, was very much, if not altogether, under her fa- 
ther's influence, and agreed with Senator Benton as 
to all important points in the whole affair. What the 
character of their discussions was the subsequent in- 
structions to Captain Fremont showed, and also the sub- 
sequent events. Yet, if I desired a summary of the 
conversations concerning California, as she remem- 
bered them, she would express their substance in the 
single sentence : " Since England intends to take Cal- 
ifornia, we must see that she does not." Meanwhile, of 
course, the certainty of a coming war with Mexico was 
laid at the basis of all the discussions. 

General Fremont, resuming his own statement, added 
that he himself knew, of course, very accurately, during 
his absence, the great extent of the influence which Mr. 
Benton's long experience and position as chairman of 
the military committee of the Senate, as well as his per- 
sonal powers and his political eminence, gave him with 
the administration. General Fremont remembers, also, 
how the coming of the Mexican War, in view of Mr. 
Benton's views and influence, was already considered by 
all the family as a certainty. And naturally all these 
facts influenced his own subsequent conduct. 

After he reached California, the unfortunate difficulty 
with Castro took place. This, General Fremont assured 
me, was in no wise occasioned by his own fault, nor was 
it any part of his intention. For as yet no further in- 
formation had reached him that could warrant him in 
getting into any voluntary difficulty with Castro. He 



TEE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 115 

remembers no incident that could have caused trouble 
from his side, or by the act of any of his party. Castro, 
as he now remembers the matter, had promised him the 
privilege of accomplishing one of the immediate objects 
of his surveying expedition, by " being allowed to travel 
through the country, and to become acquainted with the 
passes to the coast." The privilege of "resting the 
party and getting supplies " was merely an addition to 
this main request. The main request was clearly un- 
derstood on both sides. The permission of Castro was 
indeed not put in writing, but the matter was clear 
enough. And the subsequent order of Castro was also 
clearly a breaking of the latter's promise, a complete 
change of policy, unprovoked and unexpected. That 
Captain Fremont should resist this order as much as he 
did was, the general assured me, merely an expression of 
his indisposition to submit to an affront. He was will- 
ing to give Castro an opportunity to attack, although he 
himself had still no authority to attack Castro. The re- 
tirement after three days was leisurely, and surveys were 
made all along the way until Klamath Lake was reached, 
the Indians showing no hostility until the fatal night of 
Gillespie's coming, when they attacked the camp and 
killed three men. 

Gillespie's coming and his messages formed, of 
course, the main subject of my conversation with Gen- 
eral Fremont ; and the discussion upon this matter was 
quite full. Gillespie, according to the general's state- 
ment, brought a dispatch to him from Buchanan in ver- 
bal form, having destroyed the original before he passed 
through Mexico, to prevent its possible capture. He also 
brought, as has always been said, letters from Senator 
Benton and Mrs. Fremont to Captain Fremont. These, 



116 CALIFORNIA. 

indeed, were private letters, but they related in part 
to the same subject as Gillespie's dispatch. Senator 
Benton gave, in fact, to Captain Fremont, by his own 
letter, a more explicit expression of the wishes of the 
government than was given in the dispatch. But this 
could safely be done in the letter, because " the private 
letters were in a manner in family cipher, so full were 
they of prearranged reference to talks and agreements 
known only at home." 1 That this information as to 
the wishes of the government was, under the circum- 
stances, as authoritative as the official dispatch itself, is 
clear to General Fremont from the previously stated 
facts concerning Senator Benton's relations to the ad- 
ministration. 

Between the private letters and the dispatch, General 
Fremont made in his statement only this distinction : 
that the letters were " much stronger and fuller than the 
dispatch, — stronger and fuller to the one point of tak- 
ing and holding possession of California in the event of 
any occurrence that would justify it, leaving it to my 
discretion to decide upon such an occurrence." The 
substance, however, of letters and dispatch together 
was, that it was the desire of the president that Cap- 
tain Fremont should not let the English get possession 
of California, but should use any means in his power, 
or any occasion that offered, to prevent such a thing, 
looking always to the imminent probability of a war 
with Mexico. And so what was afterwards done was 
in strict conformity to these instructions, in view of the 
circumstances of the case. 

General Fremont expressed his certainty that the dis- 

1 The words quoted here are Mrs. Fremont's, added by her, for the 
sake of fuller explanation, to my MS. notes of the interview. 



TEE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 117 

patch brought by Gillespie was addressed to him di- 
rectly. And here a discussion took place at our inter- 
view which the reader will later find noteworthy. I 
brought up Mr. J. S. Hittell's assertion as made in his 
" History of San Francisco," to the effect that the Bear 
Flag affair was a blunder whereby a certain important 
and authorized plan of Consul Larkin's to gain posses- 
sion of California by peaceful means was violently 
thwarted. In view of this and of what I called an ap- 
parently well-founded opinion about Gillespie's dispatch, 
I asked whether it was not true that the message from 
the government as brought by Gillespie was really di- 
rected to Consul Larkin, or was at least ordered to be 
repeated to him. Concerning this point General Fre- 
mont's recollection was very decided and his opinion quite 
clear. He was sure that the Gillespie dispatch as he knew 
it was directed to him personally ; and he was firmly of 
the opinion that Gillespie could not have had any impor- 
tant secret instruction directed to Larkin or to anybody 
else in California save Captain Fremont himself. Nor did 
it seem at all probable to him that the government would 
have intrusted to Larkin any part of the business. Mr. 
Hittell's interpretation he considered as utterly un- 
founded in fact. Mrs. Fremont, who later, in 1849, had 
frequent opportunities for conversation with Larkin con- 
cerning past events, and who felt sure that under the cir- 
cumstances he would have had no objection to telling 
her all about the matter, never heard — so she at this 
point kindly assured me — any hint from him of any such 
secret mission. She thought that " there could hardly 
be a more improbable idea " than the one suggested by 
Mr. Hittell, namely, the idea that Larkin could have 
been instructed to get California by peaceful intrigue 



118 CALIFORNIA. 

with its inhabitants. The plan could not have been 
carried out ; Mr. Buchanan would never have dreamed 
of intrusting such a plan to a man of the imperfect edu- 
cation and small experience of Consul Larkin ; the idea 
of such a plan was inconsistent with the wishes of the 
government as made known to Captain Fremont and 
discussed in her presence in Washington. 

General Fremont also held this same view of the 
matter. He said, indeed, that Larkin might have been 
given some special instructions about conciliating the 
Californians, but insisted that no part of the real pur- 
pose of the government in California could have been 
intrusted to him or to any other agent in California 
save Gillespie as messenger and Captain Fremont him- 
self as principal agent. California could not have been 
gained by peaceable means in the way supposed ; and 
the actual purpose of the government as known at the 
time to Captain Fremont included the use of such 
means as were actually employed in view of the circum- 
stances. The whole affair had indeed to be carried on, 
in part, out of the range of official business ; and much 
was left to Captain Fremont's responsibility, so that he 
was obliged to act on his personal knowledge of what 
the government wanted, — a knowledge not wholly com- 
municated by official channels. However, so much is cer- 
tain to him : that Larkin could not have had any im- 
portant trust in the matter without the knowledge of the 
captain, while in fact the latter had no such knowledge. 1 

I dwelt perhaps unnecessarily, in the interview, on 
the question of the exact coloring of the official instruc- 
tions and the exact sense of his position which General 

1 The same view was insisted upon, later, in letters to me written 
for the general. 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 119 

Fremont remembers himself to have had at the mo- 
ment of action. No doubt, I was repeatedly assured, 
could exist as to the purpose of the government to take 
California if there should be the least chance, il and by 
force if necessary^ The government wanted and in- 
tended to push the war with Mexico, and instructed ac- 
cordingly. As to his own feeling at the moment of ac- 
tion, General Fremont said, in nearly the following 
words : " It is not to be supposed that an officer of 
the government would act as I did unless he had the 
sense that his authority for his act was sufficient under 
the circumstances. I felt that the certainty of war 
would place me in a position to have the government 
behind me in all that I might do ; but that if no war 
took place I would so assume the responsibility as to 
leave the government free to disavow me if it was 
needed. I was in a position where I might render 
great service to the government by taking upon myself 
a possible personal risk which the government knew I 
was taking." 1 There is at all events no chance, in- 
sisted General Fremont, that any one acquainted with 
his official instructions could fairly and truthfully accuse 
him of disobeying their letter, notwithstanding the rela- 
tive freedom with which under the circumstances, it was 
his duty to act. When I referred to the summary of 
the situation casually given by Mr. Barrows in his 
" Oregon," 2 according to which the young captain did 
good service by properly disregarding " red tape," Gen- 

1 The analogy of General Komaroff's recent position and action in 
Afghanistan, as the European public have interpreted the matter, 
will at once occur to any reader's mind. As this interview took place 
in December, 1884, tha particular analogy of course, could not have 
been thought of in our conversation on this occasion. 

2 See that work in the present series, p. 273. 



120 CALIFORNIA. 

eral Fremont accepted the description as very fair and 
satisfactory. 

General Fremont now continued as to subsequent 
events. "When Gillespie overtook the party at the 
head of the Sacramento Valley, Captain Fremont al- 
ready fully intended to return from Oregon after he 
should have spent some time in making surveys. When 
he should return he expected to remain in the territory 
and to "watch events." Already he hoped in this way 
to have part in the acquisition of California. The diffi- 
culty with Castro had diverted him for the moment 
from his original plans, but had not affected his ultimate 
purposes. From the time of the return to the Sacra- 
mento Valley until the first act of hostility, Captain 
Fremont waited in the valley watching events ; the 
coming of Arce's horses seemed to him to bring the 
right moment for action, and so he chose it. General 
Fremont finds it now, of course, hard to say just in how 
far there was a clear understanding between him and 
the settlers before this first hostile act. Such men as 
he needed he instructed in what it was needful for them 
to know. He took no care to prevent the misunderstand- 
ings that must arise when such a movement has to be 
made by an officer with confidential instructions. Mer- 
ritt, who was a " good man," 1 had the instructions about 
taking Arce's horses and about the subsequent seizure 
of Sonoma and of the four notable prisoners. All that 
was therefore done by Captain Fremont's order. As 
for the Bear Flag men at Sonoma, before the party of 
Captain Fremont joined them, the general said that he 

1 I fully suppose and believe that General Fremont must be here 
understood to use "good " as a relative term, — relative, namely, to 
the business of taking horses bv violence. 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 121 

neither knew nor cared what they did in the way of 
" government " at Sonoma, save indeed that their arbi- 
trary seizures of property and similar acts seemed to 
him to be bad, and were blamed by him when he came 
down to Sonoma. General Fremont, in answer to one 
further question, said that he saw no proclamation of 
Castro's ordering American settlers out of the country, 
or threatening them ; nor does he know whether there 
was one. I ought here to add that although at this 
first interview General Fremont gave me to understand 
that he had taken ample time to go over his recollections 
and records of that period ; although he himself, in fact, 
chose the time of the interview and was previously ad- 
vised by letter of what I aimed to know ; although, more- 
over, he himself on this occasion referred me more than 
once to the Claims Committee Report, heretofore fre- 
quently quoted ; and although I definitely set before 
him at the time as a difficulty Mr. Bidwell's assertion 
that the settlers had nothing to fear, still he made in 
the whole interview no mention of the traditional dan- 
ger to the settlers or of aggression from Castro as in any 
wise an important reason for his operations, but on the 
contrary distinctly gave me to understand that his duty 
as a confidential servant of the country itself fully war- 
ranted his action. Mr. Bidwell, he assured me, was as a 
settler of course unaware of the purposes of the govern- 
ment, and was therefore an incompetent critic of a con- 
fidential agent's conduct. The whole interview tended 
to this one result, that the instructions were the decisive 
element in determining the conduct of the captain, while 
the stories about Castro soon seemed to me so completely 
out of sight for General Fremont that I made, after the 
introduction of Mr. Bidwell's view and the asking of 



122 CALIFORNIA. 

the question about Castro's proclamation, no further at- 
tempt to press the matter, confident that General Fre- 
mont now felt at liberty, in view of the long-past public 
interests involved, to leave out of account those motives 
that his duty to his country seems to have once forced 
him to make so prominent. I considered the interview 
as in fact decisive upon this matter, and for some time 
had no reason to change my view of General Fremont's 
present opinion. Of course I may herein have entirely 
misunderstood the general. 

In justice to General Fremont, though with serious 
regrets for the cause of historical simplicity and definite- 
ness of result, I am forced, however, to add that, in a 
subsequent interview, in which he kindly undertook to 
help me about a few further difficulties, General Fre- 
mont returned once more, in answer to questions then 
put, to the expression of his opinion that he was at that 
time trustworthily informed of Castro's imminent hos- 
tility. Possibly to the natural inconsistencies of the 
human memory, which General Fremont himself freely 
declared to be, after forty years, a troublesome obstacle 
to historical thoroughness and accuracy, may be attrib- 
uted the whole of this last difficulty of mine. At all 
events, as we have seen, there is good reason for doubt- 
ing any memory that may now assure General Fremont 
of well-sifted and trustworthy information then possessed 
by him about any imminent danger to his command or 
to the settlers from Castro. He could have had no such 
trustworthy information, since there was none to have. 
If he was actually deceived by a conspiracy of settlers, 
or by some odd accident of circumstances, very definite 
documentary evidence would now be needed to substan- 
tiate the fact. And the whole tendency of my principal 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 123 

interview is to show that the chief and clearer memory 
of General Fremont has reference to his instructions, 
and not to Castro. Whether even this clearer memory 
is accurate, we have now to see. I think that the dan- 
ger from Castro ought at all events forever to disappear 
from the determining motives of the affair. The opera- 
tion was once for all a pure aggression, and there will 
never again be a chance of making it appear otherwise. 
Such then is General Fremont's present account. 

VII. THE MYSTERY DEEPENS. 

A government is responsible only for instructions 
that it actually gives. However near or dear the ven- 
erable Senator Benton was to the government, he was 
not in the government, and his private advices to Cap- 
tain Fremont in a " family cipher " cannot be viewed 
as committing our administration to any policy which 
it did not actually authorize that distinguished statesman 
to convey to his son-in-law. It would need no disavowal 
to save the government from the responsibility of such 
acts ; they would be ipso facto a family plot, unless the 
cabinet, or at all events the president, previously knew 
of them and approved them. All this is axiomatic. 

In view hereof I fully appreciate the importance for 
General Fremont of the discovery of sufficient proof 
that Senator Benton's " family cipher " letter contained 
nothing in opposition to the wording of the official gov- 
ernment dispatch brought by Gillespie. The fourth 
plan was, if General Fremont is right, in the dispatch 
itself, although it was more fully stated in the letter. 
The letter from Senator Benton has never seen the 
light ; but if we had it and the dispatch both before us, 
with the " cipher " interpreted, there are but four pos- 



124 CALIFORNIA. 

sibilities as to their relations : (1. ) If they disagreed, 
then Senator Benton's letter could have no authority, 
but would express only a family plot to thwart the gov- 
ernment ; and this would be true, however loving and 
confidential the daily intercourse between the venerable 
statesman and the cabinet may have been. (2.) But 
the two might perfectly agree, or the letter might be 
less explicit than the dispatch ; and then the letter from 
Senator Benton would not help us at all in our judgment. 
(3.) Since the letter, however, is said to have been more 
explicit than the dispatch, this more in the letter might 
be unauthorized exhortation ; and would then again be 
worthless. (4.) Or this more might be authorized, and 
then the best way to prove the fact would be to show 
the perfect agreement of letter and dispatch in contents' 
and in spirit, so far as the dispatch went. In all ways, 
therefore, we see how vastly important it is to know what 
the dispatch said ; and how comparatively unimportant 
it is, before we know what the dispatch said, to speculate 
about the private opinions of even Senator Benton con- 
cerning the conquest of California. The best way to 
show that his views were decisive with the cabinet is 
to find out the actual expression of the cabinet's views ; 
since a government is distinguishable by the fact that 
even its most halting and vacillating and foolish views 
are for its agents always authoritative, whilst a person 
not in the government is distinguished by the fact that 
his wisest and seemingly most influential and most far- 
seeing and most friendly advice is worth not the waste 
paper needed to write it, to a faithful agent of the gov- 
ernment, unless this agent knows from the government 
that this advice receives its own sanction. 

Can we, however, find out what the dispatch said ? 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 125 

Let us try both indirect and direct means. We have 
General Fremont's memory of the dispatch and of the 
letter, and of their agreement. But now, if the dispatch 
contained what was essentially the fourth plan, how 
could a sane government have sent it, while, both about 
the same time and later, sending instructions to Sloat 
that not only did not contemplate any support from his 
fleet to Captain Fremont's operations, 1 but gave him 
definite orders that in so many words said things utterly 
inconsistent with the notion of what we have called the 
fourth plan ? This latter inconsistency appears as fol- 
lows : 2 — 

As far as they have been published the earlier in- 
structions issued required Sloat, not, unless absolutely 
driven thereto, to attack the government of California 
as such, but only in case he should hear of a declara- 
tion of war to seize upon the ports, especially the port 
of San Francisco, but if possible without a struggle 
with the government. Sloat was meanwhile both first 
and last carefully instructed " to preserve, if possible, 
the most friendly relations with the inhabitants," and to 
" encourage them to adopt a course of neutrality." In 
an instruction that did not reach him before he acted, 
but that expresses intentions which he must well have 
known by other means when he acted, he is assured 

1 This point, heretofore dwelt upon, Colonel Fremont was himself at 
no small pains to prove before the Claims Committee, where he and 
Gillespie testified to Sloat's perplexity and confusion of mind concern- 
ing the unexpected and incomprehensible conduct of the young cap- 
tain in the north. Colonel Fremont at that time desired to show the 
energy and momentous consequences of his acts. 

2 A convenient place to find Sloat's instructions together is in Ex. 
Doc. 19, 2d Sess. 29th Congr. (Assembly), or again in Cutts, History 
of the Conquest of New Mexico and California (Philadelphia, 1847), 
in chap, vii., and in the appendix. 



126 CALIFORNIA. 

that " a connection between California and the present 
government of Mexico is supposed scarcely to exist." 
He is instructed, " as opportunity offers," to " conciliate 
the people in California towards the government of the 
United States," and to " endeavor to render their rela- 
tions with the United States as intimate and friendly as 
possible." He is to " hold possession of San Francisco, 
even while " he encourages " the people to neutrality, 
self-government, and friendship." Or again, in another 
likewise late-coming instruction, he is ordered to " en- 
deavor to establish the supremacy of the American flag 
without any strife with the people of California ; " and, 
"if California separates herself from our enemy, the 
central Mexican government, and establishes a govern- 
ment of its own under the auspices of the American 
flag," Sloat is to " take such measures as will best pro- 
mote the attachment of the people of California to the 
United States." He is to bear in mind "that this 
country desires to find in California a friend, and not an 
enemy ; to be connected with it by near ties ; to hold 
possession of it, at least during the war ; and to hold 
that possession, if possible, with the consent of the in- 
habitants." There is no reason for supposing these 
later instructions directed to Sloat to have been in any 
wise at variance with his earlier orders, not all of which 
have been published. It is plain, then, that Sloat had 
a very curious and delicate commission intrusted to his 
care. He was to get possession of the port of San Fran- 
cisco whenever war should have begun ; yet, even then, 
he ivas not, unless absolutely forced thereto, to levy war 
against the inhabitants of California. He was, on the 
contrary, to treat them as friends, who had unfortu- 
nately become involved in the Mexican difficulty by 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 127 

reason of their merely nominal connection with the 
central government. He was to invite them to con- 
tinue their self-government, while he was to urge them 
to separate peacefully from Mexico, and to come over 
to the side of the United States. He was to cultivate 
their good-will, and as far as possible to confine him- 
self to a naval occupation of their ports. If the reader 
sees herein anything of a nature to perplex and par- 
alyze Sloat's mind whenever he should learn the contrast 
between his instructions and the policy that on his ar- 
rival he found under active process of development by 
Captain Fremont and Lieutenant Gillespie, as a conse- 
quence of the latter's secret mission, we must frankly 
admit that we cannot explain the variance by any hy- 
pothesis consistent with wisdom in plotting and fidelity 
in execution. We must indeed add that yet later in- 
structions to Sloat, namely, those prepared July 12, 
1846, after instructions had already been issued to Gen- 
eral S. W. Kearny for an overland expedition to Cali- 
fornia, more explicitly contemplate an occupation of the 
whole Department by Sloat's force. For by the time 
these instructions were issued the Mexican War was 
well under way, and the government was unwilling to 
risk any futher delays. In these instructions, then, 
Sloat is expected, under the rights that belong to his 
country as belligerent, to take entire possession of Up- 
per California, so that, at the conclusion of peace, there 
may be no doubts as to such actual possession. And 
now indeed he is required, as he was not before, to es- 
tablish a civil government of his own in the territory. 
But still he is assured that " in selecting persons to hold 
office, due respect should be had to the wishes of the 
people of California," as well as to the actual possessors 



128 CALIFORNIA. 

of authority in that province." And finally, August 13, 
1846, he is instructed to give the people " as much lib- 
erty of self-government as is consistent with the general 
occupation of the country by the United States." 

But perhaps, as some one will object, when the gov- 
ernment said that " a connection between California and 
Mexico is supposed scarcely to exist," they referred to 
their secret expectation that Captain Fremont would, 
ere Sloat acted, have severed the " connection." When 
they talked of " neutrality," they meant the kind of 
"neutrality" that Captain Fremont would by this time 
have enforced by the aid of rebels and rifles. When 
they talked of " self-government," they meant self-gov- 
ernment as administered by Captain Fremont's survey- 
ing party. And when they talked of " the wishes of 
the people " and of " friendship," they were simply em- 
ploying a little irony. The text of Commodore Sloat's 
dispatches, if given in full as Mr. Bancroft wrote 
them, would completely refute this view. The opposi- 
tion of the Sloat instructions and of the fourth plan 
must be perfectly evident to any one who will read the 
instructions, and the matter would be inexplicable, and 
would give rise to problems that we might forever and 
very blindly discuss, were there not now a very differ- 
ent and shorter road out of our perplexities about what 
the government wanted. But let this opposition have 
at least its obvious weight. 

We have dwelt so long on all the indirect means of 
getting at the government's plan, for the sake of reduc- 
ing certain doubts and of cutting off certain questions 
that would otherwise come before us when we at length 
mention the one direct, long-hidden, now finally accessi- 
ble, authoritative expression of the government's plan 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 129 

itself. I refer to the instructions that Gillespie brought 
from Secretary Buchanan, and in all noteworthy prob- 
ability to the only official instructions of which Captain 
Fremont could have had any knowledge at the moment 
of acting. Whether by Gillespie's own deliberate and 
unheard-of treachery they were falsified to the captain, 
whether because of the " family cipher " letter he con- 
cluded to neglect them, whether he determined of his 
own will to take the risk of the moment and disobey 
them, whether he never even listened to find out their 
plain meaning, or, if he did, by what very natural mis- 
fortune of memory he forty years later came to miscon- 
ceive them in his statement to me, 1 and by what won- 
drous good fortune he has so long occupied a position 
such that no government official could venture to confront 
him with the facts, — all these questions I prejudge not 
and discuss not now. The historical fact about the 
instructions is the important thing. I have given Gen- 
eral Fremont's view, and I must also give the facts. 

VIII. ONLY ONE DISPATCH CONTAINS THE SECRET 
MISSION. 

No doubt can properly exist that Gillespie brought 
one official dispatch, and one only, to any agent in 
California. He was sharply questioned about the mat- 
ter by the Claims Committee, and went over the ground 
several times. He was then speaking before people 
who were quite able to control his statements by confi- 
dential inquiries at the government offices, and who in 
fact did get a confidential copy of the very instructions 

1 He did not misstate them before the Claims Committee, but he was 
cautiously reticent about them, as we have seen, in this and in all his 
earlier official expressions. 
9 



130 CALIFORNIA. 

carried. He was also testifying in Colonel Fremont's 
own case and in his favor. If he had had two sets of 
instructions, one to Larkin and one to Captain Fre- 
mont, there was every reason, for the sake of the credit 
of the hero of the occasion, why Gillespie should have 
stated the fact. But he does not state such a fact in his 
recorded testimony before the committee. What he 
distinctly says is that he had a dispatch to Larkin, and 
repeated it to Captain Fremont, having been instructed 
so to do. And for Captain Fremont he had his own 
letter of introduction, which imported nothing but the 
trustworthiness of the bearer ; and he had the Benton 
packet. That is all * save, to be sure, Gillespie's own 
personal instructions, which he communicated to Captain 
Fremont, and which undoubtedly were, as he says, " to 
watch over the interests of the United States in Califor- 
nia." How he was to "watch" we shall learn. He 
was, however, as we shall see, to cooperate with Larkin. 
Gillespie's testimony makes clear, then, that he can 
have had but one dispatch, in addition to his own per- 
sonal instructions. Even if he had had two official 
dispatches, one to Larkin and one to Captain Fremont, 
not only his silence about the latter as a separate dis- 

1 Claims Committee Report, p. 30 : "I was bearer of the duplicate 
of a dispatch to the United States consul at Monterey, as well also a 
packet for J. C. Fremont, Esq., and a letter of introduction to the lat- 
ter gentleman from the Honorable James Buchanan. The former I de- 
stroyed before entering the port of Vera Cruz, having committed it to 
memory. The packet and letter of introduction I delivered to Captain 
Fremont, upon the 9th of May, 1846, in the mountains of Oregon." 
P. 31 : "I delivered my letter of introduction and the packet intrusted 
to me to Captain Fremont, and made him acquainted with the wishes 
of the government, which were the same as stated above for my own 
guidance." P. 32 : "I was also directed to show to Colonel Fre^ 
mont the duplicate of the dispatch to Mr. Larkin." 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 131 

patch would be inexplicable, but the position of Captain 
Fremont at the moment of action would be precisely 
the same as with only one dispatch. For Gillespie's 
words, uttered, be it remembered, in Colonel Fremont's 
own cause and behalf, before the committee, in 1848, 
while the whole matter was fresh in all their minds, are 
as just quoted : "J was directed to show to Colonel 
Fremont the duplicate of the dispatch to Larkin." So 
that although General Fremont so kindly took the 
trouble to demonstrate for me, in our recent interview, 
that Larkin could not have had any secret mission from 
the government through Gillespie, the plain evidence is 
that, unless Gillespie was guilty of wanton and unheard- 
of treachery, the Larkin mission must have been at the 
time perfectly well explained to the young captain, who 
has since so completely forgotten it, and who now so 
sincerely deems it impossible. 

That the Larkin dispatch was, however, the only offi- 
cial dispatch brought to California by Gillespie in this 
affair is shown, not merely by Gillespie's own testimony, 
but by every scrap of older testimony that I have been in 
any wise able to discover bearing on this question. Al- 
though Gillespie testified in Colonel Fremont's own cause 
to the delivery at Klamath Lake of the Larkin dispatch, 
Colonel Fremont at that time gave, in his own testimony, 
no hint of having received tivo official dispatches, such 
as he must have received in case he had his own inde- 
pendent official dispatch. He merely left out Larkin' s 
name in his testimony. Furthermore, while the secret 
Larkin mission can be traced, as mentioned, more or 
less covertly, in numerous public documents, no public 
document can be found, I think, that contains any trace 
of a record of a mission to Captain Fremont. By the 



132 CALIFORNIA. 

courtesy of the present secretaries, I have official an- 
swers from the State, War," and Navy Departments 
which assure me that in ail of them careful search fails 
to reveal any record of any instruction to a secret agent 
in California at that time, save the Larkin dispatch ; 
while this, notwithstanding its very delicate and con- 
fidential character, remains yet on record. 

As an absolutely insurmountable evidence, however, 
on this point, I have at last to present Captain Fre- 
mont's own original confession to his father-in-law, in 
the before-mentioned letter of May 24, 1846. I should 
have presented it earlier, were it not that the captain, 
after all, is supposed, as we have seen, to have corre- 
sponded in those days with the venerable senator in a 
"family cipher." What he said might therefore, taken 
alone, be viewed as containing some secret meaning. 
But the coincidence of the statement now to be quoted 
with the whole mass of the historical evidence as just 
presented is simply overwhelming. The literal mean- 
ing of the young captain's words is undoubtedly to be 
accepted, and therewith ends forever the theory of a 
separate dispatch, not identical with the Larkin dis- 
patch, and brought by Gillespie to Captain Fremont in 
person. " Your letter," says the captain to the senator, 
" led me to expect some communication from him [Buch- 
anan is the antecedent of him'], " but I received noth- 
ing." The italics are as printed in the copy before 
me. 1 

How completely our memories frequently mislead us ! 
General Fremont not only assured me, but even demon- 
strated to me, as above shown, that he was, save Gil- 
lespie, the only secret; agent of the government in the 

1 See, as before, the National Intelligencer of November 12, 1846. 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 133 

territory who was intrusted with this business, Larkin 
being an almost impossible person for the purpose. But 
the indubitable facts of the record are that no secret 
official commission was brought by Gillespie to anybody 
but Larkin, and that Captain Fremont himself con- 
fessed, in writing, in 1846, that he had no secret mission 
from the government, while, as Gillespie's testimony 
shows, Captain Fremont must have known of Larkin' s 
mission ! 

« 

IX. THE MYSTERY AS EXPOUNDED BY THE ONE DIS- 
PATCH. 

One official dispatch, then, and one only, was brought 
to any secret agent, and this, the Larkin dispatch, would 
still be as inaccessible as ever, and our quandary as 
hopeless, were it not for the enterprise and good for- 
tune of Mr. H. H. Bancroft. In his excellent and now 
often herein named treasure, the Larkin papers, are 
two copies, both authentic, of the Larkin dispatch as 
brought by Gillespie. One is the original, sent around 
the Horn by the Congress. It came with Commo- 
dore Stockton, and arrived after its days of immedi- 
ate usefulness were numbered. The other copy is the 
one written out by Gillespie from memory when he 
landed at Monterey. This copy is accurate, save in one 
or two wholly unimportant verbal respects. The gal- 
lant lieutenant, certainly, so far told the truth. These 
documents have been pointed out to me at the Bancroft 
library, and it was there that my attention was first at- 
tracted to their significance. Much as I have since 
labored to make this investigation my own, much as I 
have weighed for myself and arranged and rearranged 
all the evidence that I could find with a view to being 



184 CALIFORNIA. 

as independent as possible, much as I have toiled to 
get wholly new evidence, I must still frankly admit, as 
I gladly do, that without Mr. Bancroft's documents I 
should have been as unable to find my way out of 
the labyrinth as have been all past investigators of this 
matter. Even the new evidence that I have now found 
would in large part have been sealed to me. And in 
the end T can prove nothing that gives any other sig- 
nificance to these documents than the reader is already 
quite prepared, after the foregoing, to give them him- 
self, as soon as he comes to know what they contain. 
It is a curious fact in this ma,tter that, the clew once 
found, absolutely all the disinterested evidence is seen 
to point in the same direction ; while, until the clew is 
found, the evidence looks like a mass of confusion. Yet 
without all the foregoing, and without some hint of the 
interests that have for a generation forbidden the true 
state of the case to come to the public knowledge, and 
that have at last ended in giving the hero of the tale 
such a curiously mistaken personal impression and mem- 
ory of his own share in the matter, no reader could ap- 
preciate the solution of the mystery, or understand its 
historical significance as a mystery, or enjoy the true 
humor of this life-long effort of a disobedient officer to 
seem to himself a hero. 

Here, then, to sum it all up, is our country's honor 
involved in a violation of the laws of nations, under 
circumstances of peculiar atrocity : a war brought 
among a peaceful, and, in part, cordially friendly peo- 
ple ; anarchy and irregular hostilities threatened and 
begun without any provocation, and with consequences 
that were bad enough, as it happened, and that would 
have been far worse had not regular warfare just then, 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 135 

by a happy accident, announced its robust and soon 
irresistible presence. These irregular deeds are the 
immediate work of a gallant, energetic, and able young 
officer, who thenceforth gets general credit as faith- 
ful secret agent of his government, and heroic de- 
fender of his countrymen, as well as savior to us 
of the territory of California. His reputation gained 
in this affair nearly makes him president in 1856. 
The warfare in question is also thenceforth publicly 
justified by unfounded reports of Californian hos- 
tility. All this is authorized, as the story goes, by a 
government that thus orders sixty men to distress a vast 
and ill-organized land, without providing any support 
whereby the work of their rifles can be promptly utilized 
to found any new and stable government in place of the 
one that they are commanded cruelly to harass, with- 
out warning to assault, and thus unlawfully to over- 
throw. The official authority for all this is one dispatch 
and the contents of the " family cipher," in case they 
were officially authorized. The dispatch was brought, 
as the Claims Committee Report shows, to Larkin, and 
repeated to Captain Fremont by Gillespie at Klamath 
Lake. Is all the foregoing a true interpretation of the 
dispatch ? Such is the delicate personal problem. 

The solution is that Consul Larkin was, by this dis- 
patch, instructed peacefully to intrigue for the secession 
of the Department from Mexico, by the will of its own 
inhabitants, as expressed by their own constituted author- 
ities. He was to be discreet, cautious, and alert ; and he 
was to intrigue to this one end, and with authority also. 
He was made secret agent for that purpose, and per- 
mitted to draw a special salary as such (six dollars per 
day). He was to assure the Californian authorities of 



186 CALIFORNIA. 

the good-will and sympathy of his government, in their 
controversies with Mexico ; to induce them, if possible, 
to separate voluntarily from that country ; to promise 
them, if they did separate, our " kind offices as a sister 
republic." He was to warn them against European 
agents and intrigues, and to assure them that we would 
help them against the encroachments of any such for- 
eign power, and that we would fight side by side with 
them against any European invader. By all such means 
he was to commit us to friendship, and to a policy of 
peace and good-will towards the Calif ornian people. He 
was to draw them to us by fair speeches. He was thus, 
indeed, to anticipate, as is evident, our coming troubles 
with Mexico (which, of course, are kept in the back- 
ground here) ; but he was to anticipate these troubles, as 
we can now see, by saving the coming naval command- 
ers any vexations when they arrived to seize the ports. 
Although, very naturally, no reference is made to these 
future events in the dispatch, a single reference in our 
own minds to the previously quoted instructions to Sloat 
will show us how these two sets of operations fit, like the 
halves of the broken ring in the old ballad-story, into 
the unity of one plan. Who lost the one half of the 
ring we now know. 

The language of this dispatch is characteristic of 
Buchanan. It is very cautious, but still, in view of the 
nature of the case, very plain. It begins with a refer- 
ence to the information that Larkin has long been giving 
to the department about California. The government 
is deeply interested in all this, for the United States 
take great interest in California. And the United 
States government has reason to fear European aggres- 
sors there ; for Larkin has warned the State Department 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 137 

of the signs of such. To counteract these, Larkin must 
appeal, says the dispatch, to the people of the country ; 
must let them know where their interest lies, and who 
are their true friends. " On all proper occasions you 
should not fail prudently to warn the government and 
people of California of the danger of such an interfer- 
ence to their peace and happiness ; to inspire them with 
a jealousy of European dominion ; and to arouse in their 
bosoms that love of liberty and independence so natural 
to the American continent." And, farther on, " If the 
people should desire to unite their destiny with ours, 
they would be received as brethren, whenever this can 
be done without affording Mexico just cause of com- 
plaint." Ah, soothing Buchanan ! Nobody's loyalty 
shall be shocked ! Again, the United States govern- 
ment " would vigorously interpose to prevent" California 
" from becoming a British or French colony. In this 
they might surely expect the aid of the Californians 
themselves." And yet more, the government is glad to 
hear how friendly the Californian authorities have re- 
cently been : " You may assure them of the cordial 
sympathy and friendship of the president, and that their 
conduct is appreciated "by him as it deserves." 

To carry on the " prudent warning " with effect and 
authority, Larkin is thereupon made secret agent. He 
is to exert his influence very prudently, and is to avoid 
arousing suspicions on the part of English or French 
agents. He is to collect diligently information about 
American interests in the Department. Gillespie, " a 
gentleman in whom the president reposes entire confi- 
dence," has seen these instructions, and will " cooperate 
as a confidential agent with you in carrying them into 
execution." Among other things that these two are to 



138 CALIFORNIA. 

treat in their information to the department is men- 
tioned a description of the " character of the principal 
persons " in the Calif ornian government " and of other 
distinguished and influential citizens." And a general 
requirement is made to collect all possible information 
about all matters that can interest the department. 
Captain Fremont's name is not once mentioned in the 
dispatch. 

I almost fear to insult the reader's intelligence by- 
pointing out at too great length the utter impossibility 
of any kind of reconciliation between this and the now 
dead and lamented hypothesis of the " fourth plan " of 
our list. Shall we say that it is unnecessary to make 
careful and expensive inquiries about the personal char- 
acters of prominent Californian officials, if one sends 
by the same messenger an order to chase them all out 
of office by means of an improvised armed force ? Do 
you have to know at Washington the character of a 
" distinguished and influential citizen," in order to put 
a bullet into him in California ? Shall we ask whether 
expecting " the aid of the Calif ornians themselves " 
against the supposed European agents in the territory 
means requiring as many of the Californian chiefs as 
are within reach to be taken prisoners and shut up in a 
fort by the first set of rovers that will volunteer to do 
it ? Shall we wonder whether these were the presi- 
dent's delicate means of expressing his " cordial sym- 
pathy," and his " appreciation " of the friendship that 
Larkin has described, and that the department fully 
believed in, and that even until the very moment of the 
outbreak was always experienced in California by all 
Americans save some vagabonds and their friends, and 
this aggressive armed surveying party itself ? But are 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 139 

these questions at all necessary ? Nay, of opposition we 
need not speak. That is too plain. But of the perfidy 
and the treachery we may speak, of which, of course, 
nobody need be called actually guilty, but of which our 
government would have been guilty if, by any conceiva- 
ble wantonness of folly, it had at once given countenance 
to the fourth plan and to the plan of the Larkin dis- 
patch. Such treachery would indeed have disgraced 
any petty Oriental prince in a war with a neighbor 
worthy of his meanness ; and yet just such would have 
been our national treachery had we, say through Senator 
Benton, instructed the gallant captain in the plan in 
which a false tradition (and his own memory) declare 
him to have been instructed, and had we meanwhile 
ordered Larkin to use his position as consul, as old res- 
ident, and as personal friend, to lull to sleep all possible 
suspicion in Californian breasts, and to persuade the 
people and the officials to lay aside, as it were, their 
arms, lest haply they might have wherewithal to resist 
the gallant captain whenever his hour should come for 
defending his countrymen against the " oppressors " ! 
And this perfidy, this unheard-of treachery, what under 
heaven would it have been worth to us ? To exasperate 
beyond endurance a friendly people, to insure all the 
possible causes that could combine to make their chief, 
men hate us forever and the people fight us as savagely 
as they could, — this would have been our aim. Not 
even the most cold-blooded of tyrants could have re- 
joiced in such a prospect ; because, as we were situated, 
we wanted California to come to us as prosperous and 
as peaceful a land as possible. If we desired to steal 
our neighbor's fine horse, why should we first coax him 
into confinement, and then scourge him with whips in 



140 CALIFORNIA. 

his stall, to make him break his bones ? Yet such de- 
structive and atrocious folly would be precisely the thing 
involved in the choice of a situation with Larkin at 
Monterey, intriguing under orders, and developing per- 
fectly obvious designs, assuring officials in private that 
we were the true friends, seeking to persuade them to 
declare their independence and to come over to us as a 
" sister republic ; " while the gallant Captain Fremont, 
not driven to bay, nor pursued, nor in danger, should 
be quietly, yes, stealthily, getting supplies from the 
coast, on a representation to the United States naval 
officers that he is going East, and should be " watching 
events " until he saw a chance to attack. Given a little 
longer delay of the coming of Sloat and of the regular 
war, and what horrors might not such a fashion of be- 
ginning a war have produced, by arousing popular pas- 
sions ? And if such things had been suggested to the 
cabinet at Washington, where the true impotence of the 
Californian military power was of course unknown, what 
possible company of fools could have chosen this use- 
less and dismal perfidy ? Obviously we shall suspect no 
man of deliberately planning any such a situation, least of 
all the men whose personal interests carelessly brought 
it to pass. The cabinet could not have planned it. If 
Senator Benton advised Captain Fremont's operations, 
he too must surely have done so in ignorance of the 
cabinet plan, and cannot have planned the situation as 
it resulted. And that Captain Fremont and Lieutenant 
Gillespie themselves should venture on producing such 
a situation can be explained as possible only on the 
ground that the plan of their willfully disobedient oper- 
ations so occupied their minds that they gave no sort of 
rational consideration to Larkin's position and work, or 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 141 

to the situation itself. Folly it may have been in Cap- 
tain Fremont, or only a result produced by the " family 
cipher." For the government it would have been the 
foulest and silliest of treacheries to ordain these two 
things at Washington in one cabinet. No reader can 
even dream that it was done. 

X. SUPPLEMENTARY EVIDENCE AND SUMMARY. 

So much for the significance of the dispatch. All 
the credit of our knowing about it to-day belongs, as I 
have said, to Mr. Hubert Howe Bancroft. His enter- 
prise in collecting rescued the original from utter loss to 
the world. The exhaustive researches into the Califor- 
nia documents of the time, undertaken under his direc- 
tion, made clear to him its significance, which I, however 
independently I have tried to study the matter, can in 
the end only accept as obvious. His library is the truly 
original source here, and my research, although other- 
wise independent, is at this one most important place 
but a following of his already beaten trail. And only 
by his permission do I here summarize a document that 
I still feel to be his property. But yet, in using the 
document I have been able to discover a few new facts 
that throw light upon its origin and relations. When I 
had seen and considered it at his library, I was indeed 
as sure of its authenticity as everybody must be who 
examines it. But still I felt that an opponent might 
possibly assert it to be, say, a production of Larkin him- 
self in after time, in a fit of jealousy towards General 
Fremont. Or again, some discoverable paper in Wash- 
ington archives might put it in a modified light, or might 
supplement it by something valuable. I determined, 
therefore, to apply in person at Washington, and did so 



142 CALIFORNIA. 

with a general result, through the courtesy of the de- 
partments, that has already appeared in this chapter. 
The Larkin dispatch is on record at the State Depart- 
ment, but there is no trace of any other secret instruc- 
tion concerning this business there or elsewhere in 
Washington department records. This largely nega- 
tive result is in itself, however, highly important. 

This further fact, however, I must record. While 
the secretary of state kindly let me see the Larkin dis- 
patch as a whole, there was one portion that, as I at 
first learned, was still regarded as confidential, that 
could not be shown, and that accordingly was covered. 
As I had with me a copy taken in San Francisco from 
Mr. Bancroft's original, which of course included this 
covered passage, I was able to submit this copy to offi- 
cial inspection, and so to get a courteous permission, in 
view of the fact that the document was actually no longer 
a secret, to inspect finally the whole of the precious 
official manuscript. Since then I have received a regu- 
larly certified copy of all but the purely business details 
at the end. This inspection and copy prove that the 
authenticity of Mr. H. H. Bancroft's document is not 
only in itself certain, but is a matter of permanent offi- 
cial record. 

I venture to repeat this otherwise unimportant fact, 
about the still remaining trace of secrecy at the State 
Department, as a collateral evidence that the document 
has been considered to retain its genuine and confiden- 
tial importance ever since its original production. The 
covered passage was one especially referring to Larkin's 
most significant intrigues. Of course this Larkin in- 
trigue was itself no very noble project for a great gov- 
ernment to engage in, and there is obvious reason for 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 143 

the delicacy wherewith a veil has been kept over its 
face from that day even until now. It is evident also 
that without Mr. H. H. Bancroft's previous help my 
curiosity at Washington could not properly have been 
fully satisfied, notwithstanding the marked good-will of 
all persons concerned in answering my application. He 
has therefore still the full credit of making the paper 
accessible. 

I must now add from my Washington investigation 
one of the most curious and amusing scraps of minor 
documentary evidence that it was ever my good fortune 
to hear of. The light that it throws is indeed not very 
dazzling, but it is wholly accidental and unexpected ; 
and yet what it shows is something of exactly the sort 
that we might have expected in case all the foregoing 
view is true, but not in case the common tradition of the 
past is true. In the ordinary " Letters to Consuls " of 
the State Department, in a volume that seemed not to be 
of an especially confidential character, I found two busi- 
ness letters, apparently mere bits' of routine, both of them 
surely as free themselves from any trace of a secret na- 
ture as well could be. My eye was attracted by the fa- 
miliar names. The letters, oddly enough, though copied 
(like all other consular letters, as I suppose) into the 
regular books, were this time marked " Cancelled" each 
for itself, the word being written across the lines of the 
letter. That is, very plainly, after being entered, the 
originals were not sent but destroyed. Thus a mere ac- 
cident preserved the record of a little change of mind 
at the State Department. And these superseded let- 
ters, what said they ? 

The first is dated October 27, 1845, and runs : — 



144 CALIFORNIA. 

John Black, Esq re ., U. S. C. Mexico. 

Sir, — Enclosed is a communication for Thomas O. Lar- 
kin, Esq re ., Consul of the United States at Monterey, Califor- 
nia, which you are requested to forward to him, via Mazat- 
lan, by some early and safe opportunity. 

I am sir, etc., 

James Buchanan. 

The second letter has the same date and was evidently 
to be a part of the inclosure of the first. It was to have 
a second inclosure inside itself. 

Thomas O. Larkin, Esq™, U. S. Consul, Monterey. 

Sir, — I enclose herewith a package for Captain Fremont, 
of whose movements you may be enabled to obtain some in- 
formation, and request that it may be transmitted to him by 
the first safe opportunity which presents itself, or retained 
by you for delivery, according as the state of your informa- 
tion may suggest. I am sir, etc., 

James Buchanan. 

Absolutely innocent appear these two letters. Yet 
properly interpreted they tell an odd story. If anything 
is essential to General Fremont's view, as his memory 
still frames it for him, if anything is essential to the 
traditional conception of the whole affair, it is that the 
Benton packet, with its " enigmatical " letters, was a 
part of the administration plan, was an officially designed 
supplement to the dispatch, and conveyed to the captain 
the wishes of the same government that commissioned 
Gillespie to carry it. Now since the department knew 
not exactly where Captain Fremont's party would be 
when Gillespie should reach California, it would be es- 
sential to the success of any plan which depended on the 
packet, on Gillespie's official dispatch, on Gillespie him- 
self, and on Captain Fremont, all at once, that their com- 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 145 

bination should be insured by the simple device of hav- 
ing the same messenger carry the dispatch, the packet, 
and the letter of introduction to Captain Fremont. 
Whatever tends to separate the packet from Gillespie's 
mission, tends to make the traditional view that the 
" enigmatical " letters were of official significance more 
and more incredible. 

Now, however, mark this : On October 17 the de- 
partment had commissioned Gillespie to go to Larkin. 
For on that day the Larkin dispatch is dated, both in 
the original and in the copy in the Washington archives, 
and Gillespie is mentioned in the dispatch. Ten days 
after this, Gillespie still not having set out, being de- 
tained, as it would seem, by the non-departure of the 
vessel that was to carry him to Vera Cruz, the depart- 
ment has a packet in its hands for Captain Fremont, 
whose name, we remember, was not mentioned at all in 
the' Larkin dispatch. This packet must be the Benton 
packet. The circumstances and dates make this as cer- 
tain as can be expected in such a matter. Now, how 
does the department regard this packet ? As an impor- 
tant part of the undertaking wherein Gillespie is already 
commissioned to act ? Nay, not so ; for it decides to 
forward this precious packet, with all its " enigmas," 
by the uncertain means of the ordinary Mexican mails, 
under care of Consuls Black and Larkin. No sign is 
there in this that the packet is of official importance. 
If it is, why is not Gillespie, the trusted messenger of 
the secret mission, the first thought of the secretary 
who, ten days ago, chose him for the work ? Why risk 
an essential part of the secret mission by the uncertain 
Mexican mails, when the expensive confidential agent, 

already intrusted with the fateful business, is on the 
10 



146 CALIFORNIA. 

point of departure ? Larkin is to do whatever he con- 
veniently can to deliver the packet, " as the state of his 
information may suggest." But Gillespie, who has it, 
according to tradition, as his main task to seek, to arouse, 
and to cooperate with Captain Fremont, — he is to do 
nothing at all, so far, with the precious packet. It may 
reach California as soon as he, or it may not. It may 
be delivered, or it may be kept at Monterey, " as the 
state " of Larkin's information may suggest. Six days 
later, November 3, Gillespie receives bis non-committal 
letter of introduction to Captain Fremont, and now, in- 
deed, has the packet handed to him to deliver. Can there 
be a better proof than this that Gillespie's mission had 
originally no essential connection whatever with Captain 
Fremont, and that his momentous meeting with the lat- 
ter resulted from an after-thought, possibly, of course, 
through Benton's own influence exercised at the office ? 
" We have commissioned Larkin," the department, at 
any rate, however influenced, must have said, " to in- 
trigue for us in California. Now we have this private 
package for Captain Fremont. Why not let Gillespie, 
as a part of his duty, hunt up the captain himself, de- 
liver the packet, and acquaint him with the intrigue ? 
This young officer, who is doubtless on friendly terms 
with the Californians, can help to give the affair a show 
of power, by being present to support the seceding Cal- 
ifornian authorities with his force r to render in fact ' our 
kind offices as a sister republic,' in case California de- 
clares its independence, or to offer aid against any 
dreaded British invasion. This is a fortunate comple- 
tion of the plan." All that is a natural interpretation 
of what Buchanan and the government may have 
thought. Absolutely worthless, however, seems any 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 147 

interpretation that supposes the government to have 
first determined to send a secret agent to California on 
vastly important business, and to have then deliberately- 
thought of sending an essential part of his secret mission 
not through him, but through the expected enemy's own 
uncertain mails. And there is no known evidence that 
there was any duplicate of Benton's packet. Plainly 
the stars in their courses now war against the traditional 
view of this thing. The least significant document that 
you accidentally find bearing on the matter indicates 
the same as the greatest. The published and the un- 
published disinterested evidences are positively all of 
them on one side. 

I have submitted the result of my Washington inves- 
tigation to General Fremont in a long letter, and in a 
similarly lengthy second interview. I tried to point out, 
both in the letter and in the interview, as well as I could, 
the difficulties that now assailed his view of his official 
mission. Without troubling him with the whole mass of 
evidence brought together in this chapter, I still tried 
to make clear to him that, unless he could put everything 
in an entirely novel light, it would be impossible for me 
to defend him against any captious critic who should 
put all the responsibility of his hostile action in Cal- 
ifornia upon his own shoulders. I assured him of my 
anxiety to do him justice myself, of the fact that his 
previous demonstration of the impossibility of Larkin's 
mission would now make his case harder to defend 
than ever, and of my hearty wish that his courtesy to 
me should not finally result in merely increasing the 
delicacy of his position. I begged him, therefore, to let 
me know of any further evidence, and if possible of any 
documentary evidence, that should put things in any 



148 CALIFORNIA. 

new light. In reply, General Fremont was extremely 
patient and courteous, but lie disclaimed all power to 
unravel the mystery, which to him also, as he asserts, 
is now mysterious. He knows, he insists, only what he 
learned of the wishes of the government through Gil- 
lespie and the " family cipher " letter. What else the 
government may have done or said, what other instruc- 
tions it may have given to its other servants, — for that 
he is not responsible. He did his duty, as he still 
imagines, and no doubt other people did theirs. But 
to him it is still entirely a novel thing that Larkin 
should have had any important part in all this business. 
He never heard of Larkin in so prominent a place. 
He feels sure, for the rest, that no peaceful intrigues 
could have won the Calif ornians. All his information- 
was of their imminent and serious hostility ; and he 
knows that the English would have got California had 
he not acted when he did. The government may have 
had some plan including Larkin ; but then this plan 
must have been concealed from Mr. Benton, who cer- 
tainly never knew of it, and never could have advised 
such an unwise scheme. General Fremont meanwhile 
knows that his instructions, while leaving much to his 
discretion, certainly authorized such force as he used 
under the actual conditions. This is as near to the 
whole truth as he personally is able to guide me. For 
other facts I must look elsewhere, and, while regarding 
my efforts with the most courteous interest, General 
Fremont regrets his inability to give me further help in 
the desired direction. 

Such is General Fremont's present memory and un- 
derstanding of the affair, as I have gathered them from 
him ; and the reader will certainly join with me in ap- 



THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 149 

predating his personal good humor and patience in fol- 
lowing so long as he did my wearisome research. If I 
were not just now studying an important historical 
problem, whose significance is enormously greater than 
the interests of any one man, I should be glad to do 
General Fremont the courtesy, such as it would prove, 
of my silence. For the rest that would have no real ef- 
fect, as Mr. H. H. Bancroft has access already to the 
most essential document, and had his mind made up 
about its significance long before I ever thought of the 
matter. And I have meanwhile the perfect consolation 
of knowing that the personal reputation of a distinguished 
public man such as is General Fremont, who has been 
a household, name in our nation for a generation, is 
quite independent for good as well as for evil of what I 
may happen to choose to write here. At all events, I 
have no desire to judge any further the personal charac- 
ter of the well-known and picturesque pioneer hero of 
this present tale. What inner motives led him to this 
rash and in its consequences most disastrous act, which 
once for all did whatever one agency could do to set 
over against each other in deadly enmity the Americans 
and the Californians, it is not mine to know. The 
" family cipher " letter doubtless suggested some of the 
motives. But if the deed was a family matter, the fam- 
ily is always and everywhere sacred, and especially so 
when it is engaged in making a plot. What we desire 
to know is not the inner motive, but the actual histor- 
ical responsibility for this first fatal scene of the con- 
quest of California ; and we have found out very clearly 
where that lies, the gallant general's clearest memory 
and sincerest impressions to the contrary notwithstand- 
ing:. 



150 CALIFORNIA. 

One thing only I must say in leaving finally the field 
of direct personal criticism, namely, that save for the 
cause of historical certainty as such I am heartily sorry 
to have troubled General Fremont's courtesy for help 
about this matter. For, although what he has told me 
makes the matter clearer by cutting off all hope that he 
has yet behind some entirely new official revelation to 
make, that would plainly put the responsibility for his 
action elsewhere than on his own shoulders or on his 
father-in-law's, still this remains true : he took trouble 
to help me, partly for the sake, I suppose, of putting 
himself in a fairer light ; whereas what he has told me 
has made his position more delicate than ever, has de- 
prived his memory of all its possible authority as a wit- 
ness in the matter, and yet meanwhile has made his act, 
as such, easier to judge than it would otherwise be, 
since every possible defense seems now cut off. I can- 
not suppress this fact, although I frankly regret it. I 
have tried in every way to do General Fremont justice ; 
and I am not the one to blame if the result is unfavora- 
ble. After all, however, I cannot forget that our coun- 
try's honor is here involved much more than the per- 
sonal glory of any one man. 

We must turn to other and equally characteristic 
scenes of our early life in the land that we were now to 
seize upon. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE CONQUEST COMPLETED, THE INTERREGNUM, AND 
THE BIRTH OF THE STATE. 

The discerning reader has seen in the foregoing 
something more than a study of individuals. These hos- 
tile undertakings and these intrigues are as characteris- 
tic as they were fateful. The American as conqueror is 
unwilling to appear in public as a pure aggressor ; he 
dare not seize a California as Russia has seized so much 
land in Asia, or as Napoleon, with full French approval, 
seized whatever he wanted. The American wants to 
persuade not only the world, but himself, that he is 
doing God service in a peaceable spirit, even when he 
violently takes what he has determined to get. His 
conscience is sensitive, and hostile aggression, practiced 
against any but Indians, shocks this conscience, unused 
as it is to such scenes. Therefore Semple and Ide, and 
the cautious secretary of state, and the gallant captain, 
and the venerable senator, all alike, not only as indi- 
viduals, but also as men appealing for approval to their 
fellow-countrymen at large, must present this sinful un- 
dertaking in private and in public as a sad, but strictly 
moral, humane, patriotic, enlightened, and glorious un- 
dertaking. Other peoples, more used to shedding civ- 
ilized blood, would have swallowed the interests of the 
people of twenty such Calif orni as as that of 1846, with- 
out a gasp. The agents of such nations would have 



152 CALIFORNIA. 

played at filibustering without scruple, if they had been 
instructed to adopt that plan as the most simple for get- 
ting the land desired ; or they would have intrigued 
readily, fearlessly, and again without scruple, if that plan 
had seemed to their superiors best for the purpose. But 
our national plans had to be formed so as to offend our 
squeamish natures as little as possible. Our national 
conscience, however, was not only squeamish, but also, 
in those days, not a little hypocritical. It disliked, 
moreover, to have the left hand know what the right 
hand was doing, when both were doing mischief. And 
so, because of its very virtues, it involved itself in dis- 
astrously complex ]3lots. 

I. THE CONQUERORS AND THEIR CONSCIENCES. 

All the actors concerned worked, namely, in the fear 
of this strictly virtuous, of this almost sanctimonious 
public opinion, — a public opinion that was at the same 
time, both in the North and in the South, very sensitive 
to flattery, very ambitious to see our territory grow 
bigger, and very anxious to contemplate a glorious na- 
tional destiny. Moreover, all these our agents not only 
feared the public, but participated themselves in the 
common sentiments. Hence we find the Polk cabinet 
elaborately considering, not merely how to prosecute 
successfully their intended aggressive war, just as the 
leaders of any other rapacious nation would have con- 
sidered such a matter, but also how to put their war into 
harmony with the enlightened American spirit. And, 
in the autumn of 1845, their pious plans were appar- 
ently well formed. To Mexico the Slidell mission 
should be sent, with its offer to purchase California. 
This would be a liberal offer, and, if it ever became 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 153 

public, would set us right as a powerful and generous 
nation in the eyes of the world, while it would give us 
in the mean time a chance to get California for noth- 
ing, by the completion of our intrigue in that territory 
and by the act of its own people. The beautiful and 
business-like compromise thus planned would set at one 
our national conscience and our national shrewdness ; 
it would be not only magnanimous, but inexpensive. Yet 
even this compromise must be carefully expressed by 
the honorable secretary of state in such language as 
would not offend the sensitive American spirit, in case, 
by some accident, the whole scheme should some day come 
plainly to light. Larkin must be instructed that we had 
" no ambitious aspirations to gratify," and that we only 
desired to arouse in the Californian breast "that love 
of liberty and independence so natural to the American 
continent." It was all very kindly, this desire, and 
poor Mexico ought to have been thankful for such a 
neighbor, so devoted to the cause of freedom, and so 
generous to the weak ! 

But this combination of the Slidell mission with the 
Larkin dispatch, a combination whose genuine character 
has not hitherto been properly understood by the his- 
torians of the Mexican War, 1 was not more character- 

1 What light the Larkin dispatch throws on the true intent of the 
Slidell mission one can best judge by comparing just here Von Hoist's 
interpretation of the matter, made in necessary ignorance of the true 
nature of the Larkin dispatch, on p. 113 and p. 229 of his Constitu- 
tional History, vol. iii. (American edition, covering the period from 
1846 to 1850). For Slideli's instructions, see 30th Congr., 1st Sess. 
House Ex. Doc. 69, vol. viii., pp. 33, sqq. On p. 41 of these instruc- 
tions is a significant reference to the Larkin intrigue, which, now that 
that intrigue is known, shows clearly the connection of the Slidell and 
Larkin missions in the minds of the cabinet. Slidell is to counteract 
possible foreign schemes for getting California, and, to help him in 



154 CALIFORNIA. 

istic of our nation than was the combination by which 
the pious plan was defeated. One active and not over- 
cautious young agent, who had good reason to know 
the importance of the crisis, and who was not alto- 
gether unwilling to turn it to account for various pri- 
vate ends, was in California just then, and received cer- 
tain advices in a confidential " family cipher ; " and these 
advices somehow, whether wholly by his own fault or 
also by the fault of his father-in-law, led him to thwart 
the carefully prepared plans of the government. In 
acting as ho did, he not only became for the moment a 
filibuster, pure and simple, but he endangered our whole 
scheme by, perhaps unwittingly, doing his best to drive 
California directly into the arms of England. Either 
because England really was not anxious for California 
just then, or because her agents in the Pacific were not 
sufficiently on the alert, this result was averted, yet not 
in consequence of the gallant captain's undertaking, 
but only through Sloat's arrival with the news of those 
hostilities on the Rio Grande which superseded all pre- 
vious plots and pretenses, and which, " by the act of 
Mexico," as our veracious president declared, forced us, 
unwilling, conscientious, and humane as we were, into 
an unequal contest with a physically puny foe. 

Meanwhile, the gallant captain's undertaking, although 
a plain violation of his orders, was itself not un-Ameri- 
can in its forms and methods, at least in so far as they 
were reported to the public. He felt himself, after all, 
to be a peaceful and scientific gentleman, who shunned 
war, and loved the study of nature. He was a type of 

this work, he is to have a copy of the Larkin dispatch forwarded him, 
and is to correspond freely with Larkin upon the whole subject, tak- 
ing care to transmit his letters secretly. 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 155 

our energy and of our mild civilization, in the presence 
of crafty and wily Spaniards, who, as he somehow per- 
suaded either himself or his followers, had incited the 
Indians of the unknown Klamath wilderness against 
him, had threatened the ripening wheat-fields of his 
countrymen, and at last had begun marching against 
his own party with an armed force. This armed force, 
marching against him, was indeed not at the moment to 
be seen in the whole territory by any human eye ; but 
its asserted existence nevertheless thenceforth justified 
him in the clearer eyes of heaven and his absent fellow- 
countrymen. So at least he himself and the venerable 
senator would seem in all sincerity to have felt ; and 
the public, by the nomination of the young hero to the 
presidency in 1856, and by the large vote then polled 
in his favor, set their seal of approval also upon the 
verdict of his conscience. And both he himself and 
the public, as we have seen, ever afterwards considered 
his methods of procedure to have been as noble and un- 
aggressive as they were fearless and decisive ; while all 
concerned thought our national energy and kindliness 
finely represented by the acts of this party of armed 
surveyors and trappers, who disturbed the peace of a 
quiet land, and practiced violence against inoffensive 
and helpless rancheros. 

But when hostilities had once begun, the men who 
were not in the state secrets were as American and as 
moral as those who were initiated. To them the whole 
thing appeared partly as a glorious revolution, a des- 
tined joy for the eyes of history-reading posterity, a 
high and holy business ; and partly as a missionary 
enterprise, destined to teach our beloved and erring 
Spanish-American brethren the blessings of true liberty. 



156 CALIFORNIA. 

The Bear Flag heroes interpreted the affair, in their 
way also, to a large and representative American public ; 
and these heroes, like their betters, show us what it is to 
have a national conscience sensitive enough to call loudly 
for elaborate and eloquent comfort in moments of doubt, 
and just stupid enough to be readily deluded by mock- 
eloquent cant. The result of the whole thing is that 
although, in later years, the nation at large has indeed 
come to regard the Mexican War with something of the 
shame and contempt that the " Biglow Papers " and the 
other expressions of enlightened contemporary opinion 
heaped upon the unworthy business, still, in writing Cal- 
ifornia history, few have even yet chosen to treat the acts 
of the conquest with the deserved plainness of speech, 
while, in those days, the public both in the South and 
in the whole of the West, together with a considerable 
portion of the public elsewhere, was hoodwinked by 
such methods as were used, and so actually supposed our 
acquisition of the new territory to be a God-fearing act, 
the result of the aggression and of the sinful impotence 
of our Spanish neighbors, together with our own justifi- 
able energy, and our devotion to the cause of freedom. 
It is to be hoped that this lesson, showing us as it does 
how much of conscience and even of personal sincerity 
can coexist with a minimum of effective morality in in- 
ternational undertakings, will some day be once more 
remembered ; so that when our nation is another time 
about to serve the devil, it will do so with more frank- 
ness, and will deceive itself less by half -unconscious cant. 
For the rest, our mission in the cause of liberty is to be 
accomplished through a steadfast devotion to the culti- 
vation of our own inner life, and not by going abroad 
as missionaries, as conquerors, or as marauders, among 
weaker peoples. 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 157 

II. SLOAT, THE LARKIN INTRIGUE, AND THE ENGLISH 

LEGEND. 

But with July 7, 1846, the conquest proper is only 
begun. Sloat, who had arrived from Mazatlan on July 
1, naturally hesitated at Monterey when he heard of the 
confusion produced by the gallant captain in the north. 
He could not understand this. He had been led to ex- 
pect a peaceful California, whose ports he was to seize 
as Mexican property, but whose inhabitants he was, if 
possible, to conciliate. He heard, as Larkin says, 1 " for 
several days nothing but distracting reports of foreign- 
ers and Calif ornians collecting people and preparing to 
fight." Sloat seems to have been unwilling to commit 
his government to the direct support of what naturally 
at the very first sight appeared, as he heard of it, to be 
an irregular insurrection. As he had been instructed 
to get into peaceful relations with the Californian gov- 
ernment, and so to detach the country from Mexico with- 
out a collision, he doubted, apparently, whether his in- 
structions, so far as received, authorized him to do what 
would now almost certainly involve an armed struggle 
with an angry people. The relation of Captain Fre- 
mont to the whole affair was of course to Sloat, as to 
Larkin, still an inexplicable mystery. Sloat was of a 
very vacillating temperament, and the situation involved 
more than he could for the moment meet with confidence 
and firmness. But at length he was persuaded, by more 
voices, it is said, than one, and certainly by numerous 
motives, that he must raise the flag. 2 He was under- 

1 In Larkin's own letter to Buchanan of Juty 18, 1846, contained in 
copy in the Bancroft-Larkin papers, and known to me also in the offi- 
cial copj' furnished by the State Department. 

2 Larkin (loc cit.) expresses the matter thus: "In this state of af- 



158 CALIFORNIA. 

stood by Captain Fremont and Lieutenant Gillespie, ac- 
cording to their Claims Committee testimony, to declare, 
when he soon after met them, that he had raised the 
flag " on the faith of " the doings in the north ; that is, 
so soon as he was convinced that Captain Fremont was 
really concerned in the matter. He expressed, they tell 
us, great disappointment when the captain refused to 
name his authority. For, as they want us to understand 
him, he had felt sure that Captain Fremont must have 
some official sanction for the Bear Flag doings, and 
that it would be well to support him. But, while I do 
not pretend to be able altogether to unravel Sloat's much- 
perplexed mind in those days, the reader will probably 
share with me no small hesitation, under the circum- 
stances, when he is asked to suppose this now traditional 
account of Sloat's motives, as interpreted by Captain 
Fremont, to be a complete one. For Larkin, who was 
much with Sloat at the time of the raising of the flag, 
does not so understand the matter, as we see by his let- 
ter just cited ; and there are obvious reasons for thinking 
Larkin, who carefully obeyed his own orders as he re- 
ceived them, a fairer witness on the points at issue than 
the gallant captain, who, having disobeyed his orders, 
was now deeply interested in believing that his disobedi- 
ence had been both helpful and inevitable. To be sure, 
the raising of the Bear Flag, while it very seriously per- 
plexed Sloat, and so hindered his action, did before 
July 7 furnish of itself a motive to overcome his hesita- 
tion. But this motive was not the one that Captain 
Fremont understood Sloat to exj>ress. The motive ob- 

fairs, and the knowledge of the Bear Flag having been hoisted, fear- 
ing perhaps that some other foreign officer might do it, he hoisted the 
United States flag in this town." 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 159 

viously was that, by violence or not by violence, immedi- 
ate action was now needed to save the distracted land 
from anarchy, and from seizure by any foreign power 
that might choose to regard interference at such a mo- 
ment as humane. No one, however, can understand 
Sloat's hesitation or his final decision who thinks of 
him as coming to California with the intent to make 
war on the inhabitants. As we have seen, he had no 
such intent ; and hence the operations of the gallant 
captain in the north cannot have been operations on 
whose " faith " he would be ready to act, since they 
were utterly opposed to his purposes and to his instruc- 
tions. He came, on the news of hostility with Mexico, 
to " encourage " its inhabitants " to adopt a course of 
neutrality." Such were his already cited instructions 
of June 24, 1845. To exceed these instructions by de- 
liberately beginning an open struggle with the people, 
he did not desire, and hence he hesitated when he found 
such a state of affairs as seemed to necessitate a struggle 
in case he interfered. When at last he saw that he 
must seize the country to escape yet worse troubles, he 
tried with almost pathetic earnestness to come to an un- 
derstanding with Castro and with Pio Pico, in order, as 
he quite sincerely said, to " avert the sacrifice of human 
life and the horrors of war." He invited both chiefs to 
a council at Monterey ; he assured them both that he 
came as the " best friend of California ; " and his lan- 
guage to them was in strict and undoubtedly sincere com- 
pliance with his instructions. To a hostile governor, 
whom one purposes violently to overthrow, one does not 
write as Sloat did to Pico, in the tone of one rendering 
account, as it were, to a person who is to be conciliated : 
" I assure your excellency that not the least impropriety 



160 CALIFORNIA. 

has been committed [by the Americans at Monterey], 
and that the business and social intercourse of the town 
have not been disturbed in the slightest degree." Such 
a spirit and such conduct could not have been inspired 
by " the faith of " Captain Fremont's doings. As for 
Sloat's relation after July 7 to Captain Fremont, the 
friends of the latter, not without their usual audacity, 
tried to show before the Claims Committee, by a singu- 
lar misuse of documents, that Sloat was as anxious as he 
really was to get Captain Fremont's cooperation only be- 
cause Sloat sought in the captain's supposed private of- 
ficial authority a guaranty of the propriety of his own 
course in raising the flag at Monterey. Now Sloat was 
a morally timid man ; but the published documents 
show clearly enough that he, whose instructions were to 
avoid a collision, was not living in the hope of any reas- 
surance from the gallant captain who had brought on a 
collision, but was hoping so to get control of the latter 
as " to stop the sacrifice of humpai life in the north." 
For this reason he was indeed glad to get the coopera- 
tion of the captain at once, and he used every effort to 
that end. 1 Thus here, as through all the subsequent 

1 The proof here is clear, (1) in that, as just pointed out, Sloat did 
not want a fight with the Californians, and so could not have been 
seeking for a warrant for his relatively peaceful undertaking in the 
violence of the captain; and (2) in that in his letter to Pico, July 12, 
1846 (a letter which clearly shows that he still hoped for peaceful 
submission from the Californians, and was anxious to get it through 
the most friendly advances), Sloat promises to Pico to do his own best 
to quiet the troubles in the north. For the rest, all the other relevant 
documents collected in Sen. Ex. Docs. 1 and 19, 2d Sess. 29 Congr., if 
taken together, plainly show the true reason of Sloat's haste to get 
word of Captain Fremont. This reason is as plainly not the one some- 
what vaingloriously assumed by the latter in his own account of the 
matter. Captain Fremont was to the commodore first of all a very 
disturbing force, which he indeed hoped to convert very soon into a 
useful force. 



TEE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 161 

months, Captain Fremont's conduct in the north re- 
mained effective as a serious hindrance in the way of 
the true conquest of California. It delayed the raising 
of the flag a full week after Sloat's arrival by making 
him uncertain how to apply his instructions to the anom- 
alous conditions ; and when Sloat had begun to act, the 
greatest obstacle to his work lay in the results already 
produced by the gallant marauders at Sonoma. I know 
not how much Sloat, who was in communication with 
Larkin, ever came to know of the true nature of the offi- 
cial intrigue, which the latter, so far as I know, thence- 
forth very faithfully kept secret, but both Sloat and 
Larkin must have shared to some extent the knowledge 
of what at that moment had been lost by the folly of 
the Bear Flag movement ; for this knowledge concerned 
matters that were in part, at least, no secret to many 
well-informed people at Monterey and elsewhere. 

For Larkin, the man who, of all Americans con- 
cerned with California during that crisis, best did his 
duty ; the one official whose credit, both private and 
public, is unstained by the whole affair ; and who per- 
sonally, if desert be considered, and not mere popular- 
ity, is every way by far the foremost among the men 
who won for us California, — Larkin had not been idle, 
not before Gillespie came, and much less afterwards. 
He had obeyed his orders. If he was no trained official 
and no cultivated man, he was at least a faithful patriot, 
a shrewd man of business, and a cautious servant of his 
government ; a man well acquainted with the place, the 
peoj)le, and the methods of work that must be employed. 
As an intriguer, he was distinctly successful, and no 
drop of blood need have been shed in the conquest of 
California, no flavor of the bitterness of mutual hate 
11 



162 CALIFORNIA. 

need have entered, at least for that moment, into the 
lives of the two peoples who were now jointly to occupy 
the land, had Larkin been left to complete his task. 
And although Sloat's coming would indeed have found 
the work still incomplete, it would, without the captain's 
utterly mischievous doings, have been well enough ad- 
vanced to insure with almost perfect certainty the 
peaceful change of flags. 

For see what had been done already. In the short 
period of less than two months, before the beginning of 
the Bear Flag absurdities and after Gillespie's coming, 
Larkin had so far developed his intrigue as to have, first 
of all, the direct assurance of Castro's own aid in a plan 
to declare the country independent of Mexico " in 1847 
or 1848." * " Some," says Larkin, " may have no faith 
in assertions of this kind from these people. The un- 
dersigned does. From twelve years' experience he be- 
lieves he knows them." And his knowledge of what 
a Californian's promise meant was, after all, the knowl- 
edge of a shrewd Yankee trader, to whom Californians 
for these twelve years had been owing numerous debts, 
and making, of course, numerous promises. And so his 
opinion is worth more in these matters than even the 
opinion of the captain of the transient surveying par- 
ties of 1844 and 1846. But this was only the begin- 
ning. The same intrigue had been cautiously suggested 
to leading men all over the country. The very fact that 
they themselves, in later times, never publicly confessed 
this shows that the intrigue was, as far as it had time 
to develop itself, relatively effective. Had they re- 
jected Larkin's scheme at once, they would have been 

1 See Larkin's letter to Buchanan, July 20, 1846: B. MS. and State 
Department Archives. 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 163 

free to avow their knowledge of it, both then and later. 
But, after they once had entertained the notion, the dis- 
grace that was inflicted upon them, when they later 
found themselves betrayed, through what Castro himself 
called " the despicable policy of the agents of the United 
States in this Department," sealed their lips as to the 
plot that had at first seemed to them a generous offer 
from a " sister republic," but that, after the gallant cap- 
tain's undertaking, could be remembered by them only 
as the foul treachery of an heretical nation of tyrants 
and robbers. 

The intrigue had, however, reached a yet higher 
stage. In his letter of June 1, written before the out- 
break at Sonoma (and cited, also, in the previous chap- 
ter), Larkin says : " From a dread of something, they 
hardly know what, and to devise some means to reinstate 
the deplorable condition of affairs of this country, the 
towns, by order of Governor Pico and the assembly, on 
the 30th ultimo elected eighteen members, who, with 
the seven members of the assembly and five military 
officers, are to convene in the town of Santa Barbara 
on the 15th instant. 1 Four members are chosen for 
Monterey. There are many opinions on what ought or 
in fact what can be brought forward for this meeting to 
act on. Some wish to call on some foreign nation for 
protection ; others wish to declare themselves independ- 
ent." 

Larkin then goes on to say that he is actively in- 

1 This proposed assembly appears in the Claims Committee Report 
as an important and altogether hostile junta, whose purpose was 
solely to turn the country over to England, and whose nefarious 
schemes shall have been thwarted by the gallant captain. In fact, 
this junta never met, and its purposes were certainly not definite in 
any direction. 



164 CALIFORNIA. 

triguing with the delegates to get the junta to prepare 
a memorial to the central government, setting forth the 
grievances of the Department, and so preparing the way 
for a later declaration of independence. His reason for 
advancing no further at the moment in his propositions 
to the delegates is the resistance that he meets from the 
patriotism of some people, to whom the idea of independ- 
ence seems a doubtful and dangerous one. For an 
English intrigue he is on the watch, and of course, as 
we see, he has his proper fears of England ; but he also 
has good reasons, at this moment, reasons which he 
gives at length, for regarding the English plans as not 
now imminently dangerous, in case the country remains 
quiet. Forbes, the English consul, is, namely, in his 
private capacity, a man having settled interests in the 
land and business connections with Americans, and, 
as such, he is desirous of a quick and permanent settle- 
ment of all doubts about the country's future. He is 
not anxious, therefore, in this private capacity, for any 
but an American occupation of the country. Whatever 
his official instructions may be, he is consequently not 
apt to be very zealous in the English cause. Thus, in 
view of the whole situation, Larkin feels sanguine of 
success within a year or two, and with the cordial con- 
sent of the people of the country. 

All such intrigues as Larkin's are, in their very na- 
ture, matters of no mathematical surety. In view of 
the whole situation, however, so far as I can appre- 
ciate it, there seems no serious reason to doubt Larkin's 
judgment. There is simply no evidence, as we shall 
soon see, that the English desire for California had 
ripened at that moment into any plan capable of resist- 
ing the course of events that was now steadily leading 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 165 

California away from Mexico, and into our own posses- 
sion. Had the Mexican War been postponed a few 
months or a year, and had the gallant captain not ap- 
peared on the ground in the north, California would 
have been ready to drop into our basket like a mellow 
apple. And, without the gallant captain, even the com- 
ing of the Mexican War, at the time when it came, would 
have been, in all probability, no source of serious trou- 
ble to our plans. The Larkin intrigue would have been 
prematurely closed, indeed, but not with bloodshed. 

When I say this, however, I am venturing to treat with 
conscious contempt two of the best known and best be- 
lieved of the popular legends of the conquest. One of 
these legends is that the " Macnamara scheme " was 
nearly ripe, and that, without the gallant captain's de- 
cisive interference, this scheme would have lost to us 
much, if not the whole, of California. Macnamara was, 
in fact, an Irish priest, who had evidently taken very ar- 
dent part in the then familiar and manifold schemes for 
relieving the burden of Ireland's distress by colonization. 
The magnitude of such schemes anybody can see by ref- 
erence to the English Parliamentary Papers of that time, 
and Macnamara's scheme is plainly to be judged as one 
of the number. His plan was to put several thousand 
Irish families into the San Joaquin Valley ; and the 
English government, very surely with an ardent desire 
to get rid of some thousands of Irish families, and prob- 
ably also not without a willingness to do its part in a 
very safe way towards the introduction of British sub- 
jects into California, in view of future possibilities there, 
helped him so far as to give him transportation in one 
of the vessels of the English squadron while he was en- 
gaged upon his business of trying to get a great land- 



166 CALIFORNIA. 

grant. In Mexico itself he met with some opposition ; 
it was very plainly pointed out to him by at least one 
person that while he pretended to be anxious to save 
California for Mexico and from heretical American in- 
fluence, he would in fact only insure the transfer of Cal- 
ifornia to America if he introduced there numbers of 
Irish peasants, who, though Catholic, would surely gravi- 
tate to the United States rather than to Mexico. This 
was, for the rest, so plain in itself, that, if Macnamara 
had really been a chosen agent, working with a desire to 
secure California for England by a process of coloniza- 
tion, neither he nor his superiors could have failed to ob- 
serve the fact so pointed out. To use Irish colonists as a 
barrier against American aggression would be a scheme 
that no English government would coolly resort to, if 
engaged in immediate and earnest efforts to secure Cal- 
ifornia for England herself. Any British subject in 
California might possibly, of course, be the cause of com- 
plications that would end in the transfer of the country 
to England. But it is plain also that neither Macna- 
mara nor his English patrons could have had such re- 
mote contingencies in mind as their main object. What 
they first and most wanted was to find a place to settle 
poor Irish families, in order to help relieve the pressure 
of Irish famine. And such a place seemed to be offered 
to them in California, in case they could obtain favor 
with the central government of Mexico and with that of 
the Department itself. With the particular fortunes of 
the Macnamara scheme we have little to do. It is suffi- 
cient for our purpose to note that the plan of getting the 
grant sought was incomplete at the moment of the con- 
quest, and would have been so even had the gallant cap- 
tain never seen California, a fact that appears only the 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 167 

more plainly from his own testimony before the Claims 
Committee. For therein he says that the movement of 
Governor Pio Pico in the Macnamara matter in the 
month of July was probably determined, or hastened, 
by his own assault in the north. In other words, had 
there been an imminent danger to American interests 
from Macnamara, the gallant captain himself would 
have been the one who did all that was possible on his 
part to increase the danger and to hasten its consumma- 
tion. There was, however, no such serious danger, 1 be- 
cause the Macnamara grant would have had yet more 
ordeals to go through before it could have been effective. 
It was a scheme of altogether unprecedented and irreg- 
ular character in California, and as such could not have 
worked quickly. 

The other popular legend makes the danger from 
England yet more pressing, by declaring : first, that 
Sloat was watched (as he undoubtedly was), at Mazat- 
lan, by Admiral Seymour, who with the Collingwood is 
known to have followed Sloat to Monterey, reaching that 
place a few days after the raising of the flag ; second, 
that Seymour had orders to put California under Eng- 
lish protection, so soon as hostilities should begin be- 
tween the United States and Mexico ; third, that, in 
pursuance of these orders, he raced with Sloat to Mon- 
terey, arriving too late by reason of Sloat's skill in elud- 
ing him ; and, finally, that, if he had reached Monterey 
in time, or if Sloat had hesitated longer, Seymour would 
have seized California, and would have established an 
English protectorate over the country. This story has 

1 Senor Coronel (a native of respectable position, both at that time 
and since, and good authority on these matters), says in his state- 
ment, B. MS., that the scheme encountered great popular opposition 
from Californians in the south. 



168 CALIFORNIA. 

always been somewhat thoughtlessly repeated by Gen- 
eral Fremont's friends, although, if it were true, it 
would of itself give us yet another and a direct condem- 
nation of his violent efforts to harass and overthrow 
the existing Californian government by a course which, 
unless supported by the purest luck, would have only 
served to drive California into the arms of the coming 
English force, instead of preparing California to resist 
the English. But the story is almost certainly a mere 
legend. And this I say after a most careful effort to 
understand the accessible evidence, and especially the 
evidence upon which the legend most relies. The whole 
thing is most probably a fine instance of the capacity of 
the public to be fooled by whatever has an air of mys- 
tery and of deep significance. Seymour may have had 
such instructions, but if he did we have no good evi- 
dence of the fact. 

The evidence given for the legend is as follows : 
First, in general, England is known to have been jeal- 
ous at that time of our " manifest destiny " on the Pa- 
cific, and to have been unwilling to see us get California. 
And so far there is indeed no doubt about the matter. 
English travelers' books, English magazines, and Eng- 
lish newspapers of that day express this feeling. But, 
in just the same sense, England was unwilling to see us 
get Oregon ; and yet, just at that very moment, Eng- 
land was deliberately, if unwillingly, yielding to us more 
than she had originally meant to yield in Oregon. Un- 
willingly, we say, England did this, but did so because 
Oregon was not considered to be worth a war. Even 
so, however, there can be little doubt that California also 
was not then thought by England to be worth a war. 
Yet to order the seizure of California, even while the 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 169 

Oregon negotiations were pending and while the rela- 
tions of America and England were strained, would 
have been, in view of our known determinations and 
ambitions, merely to insure a war. If England, how- 
ever, was willing to fight for California, why did she 
not fight, especially when her force then present in the 
Pacific was already, as is usually admitted, fairly able 
to cope with ours ? But these general considerations 
are, by themselves indeed, far too vague. We can only 
say from them that either the English government must 
have ordered Seymour to get California by violence if 
necessary (but then he would have used violence) ; or 
else his orders cannot have gone much farther than a 
direction to use his discretion in accepting a proposition 
from the Calif ornians themselves to take them under 
his protection. But, in the latter case, he " raced," if 
he did race, with Sloat, not to raise his own flag at once, 
but to watch events, and to accept, as he did, the inev- 
itable results of the American action, in case it should 
be decisive, and should not be preceded by a request 
from the Californians for his protection. For the rest, 
where has any one ever found or produced the evidence 
of any sort of agreement between England and Mexico, 
looking towards an alliance or towards a protectorate, 
in the event of a war between Mexico and ourselves ? 

In the second place, however, the legend knows that 
Seymour himself confessed to American naval officers, 
in friendly conversation, and while his own vessel lay 
in Monterey Bay, just after the raising of our flag, that, 
had he come first, his flag would have been flying over 
the fort in place of ours. The officers to whom Sey- 
mour said this usually speak to us through third per- 
sons. Who they were the legend generally says not, 



170 CALIFORNIA. 

unless it avers, as it sometimes does, that Sloat was one 
of them. That Seymour may have said anything one 
pleases, in harmless jest, after dinner, or at some other 
social meeting, and that American officers, and even 
Sloat himself, may have been very ready to misinter- 
pret his jest to the credit of their own exploits, is indu- 
bitable ; but that he actually, and in any earnest speech, 
revealed his instructions about so delicate a matter, is 
rank nonsense. He, of course, did nothing of the sort. 
Even if he did speak in a seemingly earnest tone, we 
could not believe him about a matter that his duty as 
an officer would have forced him to conceal. His in- 
structions, whatever they were, have never been re- 
vealed ; but in Parliament, in a conversation held in 
the autumn of 1846, before the news of our conquest 
had reached England, Lord Palmerston used language 
about our troubles with Mexico that was utterly incon- 
sistent with the existence of any plan such as would 
have seemed likely to embroil England and our own 
land in a controversy about California. If, then, there 
was such a plan existing, and if Lord Palmerston knew 
of instructions to Seymour that might lead to a quarrel 
with us concerning California, he felt bound to give no 
hint of the matter to Parliament. 1 In that case, how- 
ever, the thing was strictly confidential ; but then Ad- 
miral Seymour did not blurt it out to the first American 
officer whom he met in a social gathering. Or, if he 
pretended to do so, then so much the more reason for 
doubting the fact that he pretended to confess. 

1 The conversation in question is found in Hansard, 3d Series, vol. 
lxxxviii. p. 978. The substance is that while the Oregon difficulty 
was pending England could not offer mediation between Mexico and 
ourselves ; while now, since there is no longer fear of contest or fric- 
tion between England and ourselves, such mediation is feasible. 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 171 

The legend, in the third place, appeals to the concur- 
rent impressions and testimony of all the American 
navy men on the coast at the time, from Commodore 
Sloat down to the common seamen. All alike seem to 
have given the one interpretation to Seymour's pres- 
ence, — an interpretation that of course highly flattered 
their own vanity. They all felt that they had beaten 
the whole English nation without striking a blow. 
They certainly had done this in so far, namely, as they 
had taken California against England's openly expressed 
desire that we should not take it. But that England 
had determined to do more than to look with disfavor 
upon our seizure of California, Sloat and the sailors 
could only guess, even in case it was true. They were 
not in the state secrets of England. Who were they, 
that they should know what Admiral Seymour was 
about ? Did he know all that they were about ? And 
yet their gossip has been the infallible guide for the 
legend ever since. 

But, in the fourth place, the legend itself more di- 
rectly and triumphantly asks : What, then, was Seymour 
doing, if not racing with Sloat for California ? The 
one answer plainly is : The Oregon matter was still, so 
far as Seymour and the rest knew, an unsettled matter. 
How soon the two nations might find themselves at war, 
neither of the commanders could at the moment tell. 
It was plainly Seymour's duty to watch Sloat narrowly, 
to know where he was and what he did, and to follow 
him, moreover, with an adequate force. Might not 
Sloat's movements, for all Seymour could know, have 
some relation to Oregon also ? And if the Oregon dif- 
ficulty should lead to war, then, indeed, Seymour would 
be bound to prevent by force Sloat's seizure of Califor- 



172 CALIFORNIA. 

nia as well as any other of Sloat's undertakings. All 
this he must have had in mind, and this sufficiently ex- 
plains his movements. 

And so, finally, the legend has to fall back on a sort 
of continuity of tradition, and has to assert that every- 
body has always somehow known, since July, 1846, that 
we won California from the very jaws of the lion. 
Here is the true humor of the tradition, that, in the 
end, it is only an expression of that infallible sense 
which guides all our American frontiersmen and sail- 
ors, and talkers generally, to an intuitive and accurate 
knowledge of the details of English foreign policy. If 
you want a true sense of what our neighbor across the 
water thinks and means and is and does, you must listen 
to the average speculative American who has never read 
an English journal. He feels in his soul the wicked 
plans, the ambitious and oppressive purposes, of that 
perfidious old tyrant of the seas so fully and earnestly 
that, given such a fact as an English man-of-war with 
an admiral on board, following our fleet when it went 
to seize California, he can at once read all that England 
meant and ordered. 

As for me, I know naught of the instructions of Ad- 
miral Seymour in 1846, save what one very indirect 
piece of evidence indicates, in a purely negative way, as 
to the plans that they must have expressed. This one 
evidence is contained in the remarks of Lord Palmer- 
ston just cited. This is the single important objective 
fact amongst the wreck of legendary trash about the 
English official designs upon California in 1846. And 
what this evidence indicates I have already suggested. 
I think it quite inconsistent with any purpose on the 
part of the English government to risk a struggle with 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 173 

us for the sake of the wildernesses of California. It is 
not indeed as if Lord Palmerston had announced directly 
whether he had or whether his predecessors had had 
designs on California. A direct mention of California 
he evaded. His remarks are important, however, since 
while he does not mention California at all, he does 
distinctly mention and promise a course of public action 
concerning Mexico and ourselves that would have been 
absurd and impossible if he had already determined (or 
if his very recent predecessors, who must have instructed 
Seymour, had determined, in such a way as now to bind 
his conduct) that California should be seized at the risk 
of a conflict with us, and in the face of our own open 
armed preparations to take the territory upon the out- 
break of a war with Mexico, this war itself being just 
as openly a part of our programme. 

This, I say, is all that I know of relevant evidence 
bearing upon the instructions of Admiral Seymour. 
Whatever they were, it is very improbable, therefore, 
that they resembled those mentioned in the legend. 
And the evidence that the legend gives in support of its 
own claims is merely amusing in its self-confident incon- 
clusiveness. 

Legends are plenty in this part of our story, and we 
have here yet to notice, as bearing on the problems of 
the moment of the conquest, a tale that Lieutenant Re- 
vere 1 first told, from a source that he does not name, 
concerning a mysterious junta held at Monterey, in 
May, 1846, wherein certain principal men of California, 
including, among others, Governor Pio Pico (who was 
not in Monterey or near it at all during this time) and 
General Vallejo, shall have discussed the situation, 
1 Tour on Duty in California, p. 24. 



174 CALIFORNIA. 

and shall have advised together whether California 
ought to pass over to the United States or to some Eu- 
ropean power. The speeches of these dignitaries are 
given at length hy Lieutenant Revere, much in the taste 
of the ancient historians ; and the same speeches have 
been slavishly repeated by numberless writers ever 
since, until General Vallejo has been himself induced, 
in recent years, to remember that the story, save as to 
Pio Pico and some other minor matters, is substantially 
true, even down to the details of General Vallejo's own 
speech. There is little reason, however, to doubt that 
the story is substantially legendary, for General Vallejo, 
among other things, remembers the meeting as one 
public enough to be attended by the various foreign 
consuls, and, if I am not mistaken, declares it to have 
been held at Larkin's own house, and to have been offi- 
cially reported by the well-known official, Hartnell. 
Yet no official or other contemporary MS. record of 
such a meeting is known to Mr. Bancroft's library, nor 
is such a record, as I learn on questioning at Mr. Ban- 
croft's library, discoverable in the archives ; and as for 
Larkin, he, who could not possibly have been ignorant 
of such a junta, knows absolutely nothing about it, as 
appears from his letters to the State Department. 

III. THE WOLF AND THE LAMB. 

Treating Macnamara's scheme, Admiral Seymour's 
undertakings, and, in general, the salvation of Califor- 
nia from the lion's mouth, with the indifference that, in 
the present state of the historical evidence, these mat- 
ters seem to deserve, we return to the objectively veri- 
fiable facts of the conquest, which we must sketch with 
continued regard for our special interest in the nar- 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 175 

rative. We are studying these, like other events, as facts 
of importance for the social future of California, and as 
characteristic of our nation. 

Sloat raised the flag at Monterey without opposition, 
and Captain Montgomery, at Yerba Buena, did the 
same. Castro was in the interior, and Sloat wrote him, 
as has been said, begging him to come to terms without a 
contest. Castro attempted no resistance, but retreated 
southward, disgusted with the agents of this unintelli- 
gible power, who, as it seemed to him, had been delib- 
erately trying to entrap him by a mixture of soft words 
and treacherous violence. In his replies to Sloat 1 he 
gave the latter to understand that such a moment, with 
the Bear Flag people disturbing the north and hostile 
ships lying in the harbor of Monterey, was not the oc- 
casion for peaceful negotiations, 2 and we, who know now 
how our nation, through its representatives, had been 
treating Castro, cannot blame him for his mood. He 
seemed still to be not unmindful of the possibility of 
explanations from Sloat that might make negotiation 
feasible ; but he had little hope of anything but force 
and treachery. On his way southwards he met Pio 
Pico, who, full of the domestic quarrels of the times, and 
ignorant of the exact situation, had been coming against 
him with hostile intent. The two resolved to lay aside 
their differences for the present, and to consider what 
to do for their common country. The proposed junta 
that had been appointed to meet at Santa Barbara June 

1 Sen. Ex. Doc, 2d Ses., 29th Congr.; Doc. 1, p. 647; Doc. 19, p. 
104. 

2 Castro wrote two letters, both dated July 9, from San Juan mis- 
sion. One refuses to surrender to Sloat until after a consultation with 
the authorities in the south. The other demands information about 
the marauders in the north. 



176 CALIFORNIA. 

15, to discuss the situation, and to consider the possible 
means of preparing for invasion or for other change, 
had been altogether abandoned weeks before, the petty- 
political quarrels of the Calif ornians being in part re- 
sponsible for this result. 1 And now the duty of the 
two chiefs was to consider what should be the means to 
meet the entirely new conditions. Could they resist the 
American invasion ? Or should they seek to get fair 
terms from a power that had just proved, by its appar- 
ent double-dealing, its determination to crush them al- 
together ? Their discussion of these matters was broken 
by a somewhat characteristic dispute 2 concerning the 
proper person to have command of the forces of the 
north and the south, these forces being now united at 
Los Angeles, whither the two chiefs had retreated. The 
controversy was at length settled in Castro's favor ; and 
an effort was made to organize some resistance to 
the American authorities, since favorable negotiations 
seemed out of the question. But of course this now 
distracted land, that had so often played at war, but 
that had never fought a real battle, had neither good 
weapons, nor trained soldiers, nor powder, nor supplies. 
A contest against the United States forces was, how- 
ever one might pretend to organize one's resources, 
simply hopeless, and Castro knew it, although he tried 
to save after a fashion his personal honor, grossly in- 
sulted as it had been, by showing a bold front to the 
enemy, so far as words could serve him. 

Meanwhile the Americans had taken possession of the 

1 Coronel, in his statement, B. MS., refers the abandonment of the 
junta to political difficulties; but of course the troubles that had now- 
followed would have rendered the meeting in any case useless. 

2 Coronel, loc. cit. 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 177 

main posts in the northern country from Monterey up- 
wards, without immediate opposition of any sort. But 
after Captain Fremont had joined the forces of Commo- 
dore Sloat at Monterey, an unfavorable change had 
come over the spirit of the official American undertak- 
ings. Sloat, namely, had abandoned his command and 
returned to the United States, while Commodore Stock- 
ton, who had arrived in the Congress, took his place. 
Stockton had brought with him the sealed original of 
the now useless Larkin dispatch. He was under orders 
to deliver this, and then to report to Sloat. On his ar- 
rival he found himself by Sloat's retirement quickly 
intrusted with a serious responsibility, which he used for 
his own glory and amusement, with becoming alacrity, 
and with some genuine courage and energy. 

A brief consultation with Captain Fremont seems to 
have had far more weight in his mind than what he 
chose to learn from Sloat's instructions. To conciliate 
the people of California without or before conquering 
them seemed to him, as to the gallant captain, nonsen- 
sical. He chose, apparently, to assume that the gallant 
captain's behavior in the north had been due to official 
instructions, although, at that early day, while the gal- 
lant captain's memory was still fresh concerning the 
whole matter, it must have been impossible that the 
latter should voluntarily give to the commodore such a 
mistaken account as he recently, through an error of 
memory, gave to me. But doubtless, if he was silent 
on the subject, his silence was not free from a certain 
eloquence; and, at all events, when the new commo- 
dore's plans were once laid the latter prepared a proc- 
lamation that, for effrontery, has never been surpassed 
12 



178 CALIFORNIA. 

by the pronouncements of any Mexican. 1 This proc- 
lamation was issued five days after the commodore had, 
on July 23, assumed command of the forces of the 
United States on the coast, and four days after he had 
accepted Captain Fremont's offer of the improvised force 
from the north, and had organized the same into the 
" California battalion of mounted riflemen." The proc- 
lamation expressed the commodore's horror on assuming 
command, at hearing of ' k scenes of rapine, blood, and 
murder " in the interior. Who was really responsible 
for such scenes, in so far as they were actual, he, of 
course, ignored ; and hence found himself " constrained 
by every principle of national honor ... to put an end, 
at once and by force, to the lawless depredations daily 
committed by General Castro's men upon the persons 
and property of peaceful and unoffending inhabitants." 
This proclamation of the wolf to the lamb was surely 
almost as good, in its way, as Ide's oration to the inhab- 
itants of Sonoma, and the words so far used are fully 
borne out by the rest of the document. Stockton re- 
ferred, rather covertly, to the duty which even he must 
have felt devolving upon him, as Sloat's successor, to 
treat, if possible, in a peaceful spirit with the authori- 
ties of the country. But, as he felt, he could not, much 
to his regret, live up to these instructions of his prede- 

1 Cf. TuthilPs remark, History of California, p. 186 : "There was 
not wanting a certain Mexican flavor in this" (proclamation). Tut- 
hilPs account of the early part of the conquest appears to me, of course, 
in view of the foregoing considerations, very imperfect and erroneous 
as concerns some weighty matters, although in the better known details 
it is fairly sound. Yet I cannot but refer the reader to Tuthill's pages 
just here, in view of the decidedly graceful style and the generally 
sober and excellent spirit in which he tells the story. See, further, 
Stockton's proclamation of July 28, 1846, in the Annals of San Fran- 
cisco, p. 104. 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 179 

cessor. So the proclamation at least suggested. What 
it said was : " I cannot therefore confine my operations 
to the quiet and undisturbed possession of the defense- 
less ports of Monterey and San Francisco, whilst the 
people elsewhere are suffering from lawless violence, but 
will immediately march against these boastful and abu- 
sive chiefs, . . . who, unless driven out, will . . . keep 
this beautiful country in a constant state of revolution 
and bloodshed." 

The Californian battalion had now already embarked 
for San Diego in the Cyane, that they might be landed 
south of Castro, to cut off his retreat, a plan that proved 
in the sequel ineffective. Stockton himself sailed in the 
Congress for San Pedro, the port of Los Angeles, and 
there landed a force, formed from the sailors and ma- 
rines, with six small cannon. Of Stockton's vast cour- 
age and energy in landing such a crowd of sea-dogs to 
undertake a hunt on dry land, and in training them, 
after a fashion, for this new sort of chase, directed as 
it was against what he himself chose to pretend to 
consider a strong and well-fortified force of Californi- 
ans, well used to the country, — of all this, Stockton's 
admirers, among whom he was undoubtedly the chief, 
have taken no small pains to convince us. 1 We should 
be better convinced of this if Stockton's opportuni- 
ties to learn from the gallant captain, and from others, 
the utter helplessness of this little nation of herdsmen 
and colonists, had not been so sufficient, even in the 
very few days that passed ere his plans were formed. 

1 See Stockton himself, in his mock-modest report to the secre- 
tary of the navy, in the already cited Doc. 19, p. 106 (or Doc. 1, also 
cited, p. 668); and the Annals of San Francisco, pp. 102 and 105. 
Cf. the much more sensible but still too good-humored account of 
Tuthill, pp. 187, 188. 



180 CALIFORNIA. 

In fact, save by way of a certain bustle of prepara- 
tion at Los Angeles, Castro and the rest could do sim- 
ply nothing in the short time left them. Castro, indeed, 
made an effort to open with Stockton, as the latter 
approached, the negotiations that he still thought due 
to himself in view of Sloat's earlier efforts to concil- 
iate him. But it was hoping against hope to expect 
Stockton, who wanted nothing but noise and a warrior's 
glory, either to understand his true obligations to Castro 
and to the other Californians, or to consider such obli- 
gations as important. Castro surely, for his own honor's 
sake, ought not to have approached Stockton with any 
further shows of negotiation. Yet, for the sake, I sup- 
pose, of getting better terms for his countrymen, Castro 
did make such an approach, through messengers, to 
Stockton, as the latter was on the march towards Los 
Angeles. The messengers were insultingly received, 
and a message was sent back demanding unconditional 
surrender. Resistance was of course hopeless without 
arms or powder, and both Castro and Pico set out for 
Mexico. 

On the 13th of August, Stockton, who had now been 
joined by the California battalion (which had landed 
at San Diego, and come northward), entered Los An- 
geles with his full force, and, unresisted, raised the flag. 
Shortly afterwards he issued several proclamations, on 
successive days, declaring the country a part of the ter- 
ritory of the United States, and making arrangements 
for a provisional government. Now that he had made 
a glorious conquest, with his marines, in face of the 
aforesaid overwhelming odds, he felt at liberty to speak 
more peaceably, for the moment, to the inhabitants of 
the land. They should be allowed, his proclamations 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 181 

assured them, to elect alcaldes and municipal officers 
throughout the territory. They should be unmolested 
in their regular business, and, if they submitted quietly, 
they should be considered as citizens of the territory, 
and protected accordingly. They should soon be gov- 
erned by a regular governor, secretary, and legislative 
council, to whose provisional appointment he would 
promptly see. In the mean time, of course, there would 
remain a good deal of martial law about their position. 
" All persons who, without special permission, are found 
with arms outside their own houses will be considered 
as enemies, and will be shipped out of the country." 
The California battalion would remain in service for 
the present. 1 

As to what they expressed in so many words, Stock- 
ton's proclamations of August 15-22, if placed side 
by side with Sloat's proclamation of July 7, issued 
upon the raising of the flag, would seem at first glance 
to differ mainly by containing more details, such as 
would naturally be suggested by a more advanced stage 
of the conquest. Yet, if one looks more carefully, one 
finds a serious difference in spirit, with one important, 
but since then seldom sufficiently recognized, difference 
in the pledges made. For Sloat, the Californians are 
the inhabitants of a nearly independent province, whom 
he wishes to conciliate, not only as individuals, but as 
a people, having a genuine political unity. California 
is to be relieved henceforth from the corrupt and dis- 
orderly rule of " the central government of Mexico," 
which Sloat, by this expression, takes care to represent 
as not identical with the proper government of California 
itself, but as rather a relatively foreign and disturbing 
1 Docs, as cited : Doc. 1, p. 669, sqq. ; Doc. 19, p. 107, sqq. 



182 CALIFORNIA. 

force in Calif ornian affairs. As for the Calif ornians 
themselves, Sloat has " full confidence in their honor 
and integrity," and accordingly invites " the judges, 
alcaldes, and other civil officers" (a rather dubious form 
of language, that undoubtedly, however, if strictly inter- 
preted, would have included Pio Pico and the depart- 
mental assembly, in case they had consented to be in- 
cluded) " to retain their offices, and to execute their 
functions as heretofore, that the public tranquillity may 
not be disturbed ; at least, until the government of the 
territory can be more definitely arranged." 

Now an essential part of the pledge thus made by 
Sloat, Stockton, after his interview with the gallant 
Captain Fremont, and before he could know of the way 
in which Pico and the assembly could be induced to 
view the matter, in case they should be wisely ap- 
proached, simply tore up and flung to the winds. 
Personal glory did not lie for him in the direction of 
negotiations with the " other civil officers," nor did he, 
like Sloat, come as the " best friend of California," anx- 
ious to avoid bloodshed. Sloat had written to ask both 
Castro and Pico to a council at Monterey, under a sol- 
emn assurance of a safe-conduct if they should consent 
to come. But all this was naught for Stockton. To be 
sure, he was not very malicious. He did not want to 
oppress the Californians, when once he should have con- 
quered them. He only wanted his fun, as a gallant and 
glory -seeking American officer, out of the business of 
conquering them. Then indeed he could afford to be 
generous. But first he must have the fight. But as 
there was nobody in the territory capable of fighting 
him with any prospect of success, Stockton, after bully- 
ing and exasperating the defenseless provincial govern- 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 183 

ment and people with insulting proclamations and dem- 
onstrations, had at last to be content for the moment 
with such glory as these bloodless exercises could give 
him. And so, in the proclamations of August 15-22, 
he has at length to treat the Californians with the con- 
descending airs of a generous conqueror. He proclaims 
a blockade of the whole coast against all but American 
merchant vessels ; he introduces several provisions of 
martial law ; he undertakes to establish very soon a pro- 
visional governor and legislative assembly, and merely 
" permits " the people to elect their local civil officers. 
All these provisions are, of course, in perfect accord 
with the usages of civilized conquerors, and do not ex- 
ceed Stockton's temporary authority, so long as one con- 
siders him commander of a conquering force ; but to 
convert the seizure of California into a military conquest 
at all, when as yet the inhabitants had made absolutely 
no violent resistance to the regular forces of the United 
States, was against the whole spirit of the plans and in- 
structions of our government. Our official plan was to 
take possession of the ports, and to invite the inhabitants 
either to join us, or to retain, at any rate, their domestic 
freedom of action, while keeping the peace towards us. 
If the inhabitants had violently resisted this plan, then 
we should have been obliged to conquer them ; but as 
yet they had never resisted us, save by the use of a few 
very naturally bold words, uttered in the first shock of 
their vexation. They had only resisted the marauders 
in the north, who had been in arms against the express 
commands of our government, as communicated to Cap- 
tain Fremont by Lieutenant Gillespie. Therefore our 
pretense of needing to conquer the inhabitants was a 
mere show, gotten up either to justify the affair in the 



184 CALIFORNIA. 

north, or to satisfy a vain love of personal glory in the 
wanton mind of Commodore Stockton, or, more prob- 
ably, to do both. And the only outcome of it all was 
the exasperation of the natives. All the assurances of 
good-will and all the fine promises that, in Stockton's 
proclamations of August, give these documents at first 
sight an apparently close connection and agreement with 
Sloat's pledges of July 7, could not serve to hide by fine 
phrases the essential perfidy of our conduct towards the 
Californians. The people at large knew, of course, noth- 
ing of the Larkin intrigue. But they did know, or at 
least believed, that we had been long scheming to get 
the country, that our agents had made many promises, 
that we had then brutally attacked the people in the 
north, and that we had thereafter taken violent posses- 
sion of the country, publishing proclamations in which 
assurances of peace and good-will were so mingled with 
threats and abuse that nobody could make out more of 
their meaning than that they signified the use of force 
at present and of probable oppression in future. Hence- 
forth all respectable and honorable Californians were 
apt to suspect, if not to detest, us, unless, indeed, they 
should prove very forgiving. 

IV. THE REVOLT AND THE RE- CONQUEST. 

And yet even now, by a proper behavior, we might 
have slowly won back something of the confidence and 
good-will of the people, notwithstanding all that had 
happened. Of course, thus far, our ill-treatment of them 
had been at worst largely the consequence of a char- 
acteristic wantonness, ignorance, and personal ambi- 
tion on the part of our agents, and not the expression 
of any deliberate determination to oppress the natives, 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 185 

when once we should have taken their land. Much as 
we had by this time exasperated them, there was a pos- 
sibility of repentance. In some directions, moreover, 
repentance soon seemed to be taking effect. 

And first on the list of those who, after this provis- 
ional completion of the conquest, began to show a desire 
to treat our new subjects as fellow-citizens and friends, 
one must mention with great satisfaction the name of 
no less a person than the gallant captain himself, the 
chief author of the foregoing mischief. We have 
throughout been ready to see, in all the serious mistakes 
and evils of his conduct, rather the expression of bad 
advice from home, or of wanton personal ambition, 
than the outcome of any deliberate malice towards the 
Californians themselves. Their interest before the con- 
quest stood in the way of his plans, and in so far he 
was guilty of immeasurable injustice to their rights and 
to their future prosperity, and was for the time as cruel 
as he was unjust. But he was still a kindly and warm- 
hearted man, whenever his ambitions, or his private in- 
terests, or those of his family, were not concerned. 
And he now had for the moment no need to be cruel to 
the fallen foe. On the contrary, he seems at once to 
have foreseen an opportunity for future business and 
social relations with the people, such as led him now to 
desire their friendship, just as he so recently had deter- 
mined upon their overthrow. He was quick to adapt 
himself to their ways, and soon began to win the per- 
sonal friendship of many of them. Although he could 
no longer stay the bitter consequences for the whole land 
of his folly in the north, consequences which remain 
until this day, and will yet long remain, he could al- 
ready excuse himself in the eyes of some even of the 



186 CALIFORNIA. 

natives by neglecting to assume his full share of personal 
responsibility for the outbreak ; and he could mean- 
while use his undoubted personal charm to win the 
hearts of hospitable Calif ornians. 1 What was evil 
about the matter our government had especially to an- 
swer for, in the minds of the people, and so the captain 
himself began to evade personal censure ; nor has he 
ever since left off. But at all events this new course of 
conduct was not only prudent, but so far as the Califor- 
nians were concerned generous and just ; and the gal- 
lant captain deserves all due credit for it. 

With this new-found wisdom of Captain Fremont's 
well agrees also the more habitual conduct of such a 
man as the Rev. Walter Colton at Monterey, whose 
book, " Three Years in California," 2 gives us such an ex- 
cellent notion of some aspects of the days of the inter- 

1 Coronel, in his B. MS. statement, contrasts the conduct of the gal- 
lant captain in the south at this moment very favorably with that of 
other American officers, after the conquest was once for the time 
over: " Frdmont se entrego a las diversiones del pais, se familiarizo 
prontamente con los habitantes, adoptando sus trajes y modo de vivir 
hasta cierto grado. El se vestia como los rancheros, y andaba a ca- 
ballo con ellos; se hicieron tan intimas las relaciones entre el y los del 
pais, que ya muchos de estos le tuteaban." This personal affability 
of conduct and this charm of manner could not at once, Coronel says, 
conquer the objections of many of the principal families ; but the im- 
pression produced on the mass of the people was excellent, so far as it 
went. 

2 New York, 1852. The author, a chaplain in the navy, was ap- 
pointed provisional alcalde of Monterey by Commodore Stockton on 
July 28, 1846, was formally elected by the people to the same office 
at the election under Stockton's proclamation, September 15, and re- 
mained in the country until after the gold discovery. He tells us his 
story in diary form, and includes in it too much of his decidedly inno- 
cent inner life for the purposes of such a work ; but of the condition of 
the country he has also much to tell that is very helpful. September 
4, 1846, he held the first jury trial in California. He was throughout 
an efficient and popular officer. 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 187 

regnum. He found the people good-humored, and dis- 
posed to submit to their fate. He studied them thought- 
fully ; applied from the first a sensible and tolerant 
mind to understanding and to helping them, in his office 
as alcalde ; and was in all respects an example of the 
more enlightened American influence at its very best, in 
a time of transition. The people of Monterey liked 
him, and felt generally contented with the new rule as 
represented by him. 

Some of the new officials, also, were Americans who 
had long been in the country, who had not participated 
in the sins of the conquest, and who were the men for 
the place. But there were exceptions to the excellent 
rule thus exemplified. And the exceptions were numer- 
ous enough to keep the hatreds of the moment well alive 
in most parts of the country. In the eyes of men like 
Gillespie, in the eyes of numerous navy officers and 
men, in the eyes of most of the California battalion, the 
Californians were, after what had happened, a boastful 
and treacherous people, given to murder and pillage, an 
inferior race, a people to be suspected, to be kept down 
with a strong arm, and to be reminded constantly of 
their position as the vanquished. Gillespie, however, 
was left in charge at Los Angeles. Other navy men 
were scattered along the coast. The California battal- 
ion was under arms, was expectant of its pay, and 
meanwhile was not perfectly contented. The result of 
Gillespie's intolerance was an outbreak at the south ; 
and in this movement the whole country south of the 
bay more or less sympathized and took part. In the 
outbreak the native people gave their well-nursed exas- 
peration vent. Helpless as they on the whole were be- 
fore the well-armed Americans, they still showed of 



188 CALIFORNIA. 

what stuff they were made by resisting on at least two 
occasions, namely, near San Pedro and at San Pascual, 
with stubbornness and not without success. They were 
by January, 1847, a second time conquered, this time 
not without considerable bloodshed, and the bitterness 
of the conquest was thus once for all rendered chronic, 
and for a large part of the population fatal. For the 
new outbreak had, in American eyes, all the character of 
a treacherous revolt, while the bloodshed rendered the 
hatred of the native population thenceforth undying. 
Everywhere the result was bad, and to this second act 
of the conquest the subsequent general demoralization 
of a mass of the native population, especially in the 
south, may be directly traced. The whole disturbance 
was a fruitful mother of bandits and vagabonds, who 
vexed the California of later days for a score of years. 

Gillespie at Los Angeles was, I have said, the immedi- 
ate cause of the revolt. This distinguished and faithless 
bearer of dispatches was not a suitable man to conciliate 
the natives. He adopted Commodore Stockton's tone, 
and made them all feel the bitterness of martial law, 
vexing them with unnecessary regulations ; he neither 
knew nor cared to know the customs of the people. 1 At 

1 The general feeling is no doubt fairly voiced by Coronel, who, as 
resident, was directly aware of what went on in Los Angeles at the 
time. Coronel, a man of thoroughly trustworthy character, is the 
Californian to whom Mrs. Jackson was indebted for some of the ac- 
counts of the scenes of the re-conquest that she repeated in her well- 
known articles in the Century Magazine. His statement concerning 
Gillespie's doings at this moment runs (B. MS.): "Gillespie . . . em- 
pezo a dictar medidas muy opresivas ; per esemplo : publico una orden 
para que no andudesen dos personas juntas en las calles ; para que no 
se renuiesen los cindadanos baja nigun pretesto en sus casas ; para que 
se cerrasen las tiendas de comestibles a la puesta del sol." " Gilles- 
pie," concludes Coronel, "tenia a esta gente tan obstinada que se hizo 
una especie de tiranuelo odioso." 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 189 

last, a propos of the arbitrary arrest of a citizen, a dis- 
turbance broke out ; and this led to more arrests. One 
man whose arrest was at this time ordered, J. M. Flores, 
an officer under the previous government, fled from the 
town, and began to form a party of the discontented 
fugitives outside. Flores was, unfortunately for his fu- 
ture reputation in history, a paroled military officer, and 
so were a number of those who joined him. The re- 
volt, as an expression of outraged public opinion, would 
indeed have been justifiable enough, had it not been 
hopeless ; but the paroled men who took part in it were 
numerous enough to give the whole affair a character 
of which the contemporary American writers were not 
slow to take advantage in what they said of it. Yet the 
insurgents were not all officers, much less paroled ones. 
The revolt was a popular act. The incidents of the re- 
conquest, which thus opens, are complex and exciting, 
and form a fruitful subject of controversy. Our pur- 
poses and our limits forbid us to dwell upon them, and 
above all upon the controversy that they led to, — the 
famous controversy between General Kearny and Cap- 
tain (or now more properly Lieutenant-Colonel) Fre- 
mont. These details, which would be necessary in a 
complete history of California, are neither so character- 
istic of the forces at work, nor so fateful for the future 
of California, as those that we have been already treat- 
ing. 1 

1 Authorities in print and easily accessible concerning the revolt are, 
of compendious narratives, Tut hill's in his History, Btyant's (from 
personal observation) in his What I saw in California, Cutts's in his 
Conquest of California and New Mexico, and the story as told in the 
Annals of San Francisco. The proceedings of the Fremont-Kearny 
court-martial contain much original matter. Hall's History oj San 
Jose treats of the revolt in that region. Lieutenant Cooke's Conquest 



190 CALIFORNIA. 

In brief, however, Gillespie's position at Los Angeles 
became untenable against the overwhelming numbers of 
the revolting party. After a lively siege, some of whose 
incidents Coronel recounts, in his statement to Mr. 
Bancroft, with much zest, Gillespie capitulated, retiring 
to Monterey. The revolting party labored hard to get 
powder and other supplies, and Flores issued vigorous 
proclamations. At Santa Barbara Lieutenant Talbot 
escaped with his men from the besieging force. The 
lower country was soon largely overrun by them. 

Stockton promptly heard of these troubles. He was 
at Yerba Buena at the time, and at a banquet that had 
been tendered him by the Americans of the place he 
made a speech concerning the news, in his most brutal 
and boastful tone, showing not the least sense of the 
position and feelings of the people, announcing his in- 
tention to make quick work of the revolt, and express- 
ing in a violent way his opinion of those engaged in it. 
He then set sail for San Pedro in the Congress, having 
previously sent the Savannah with Captain Mervine to 
the same place. The California battalion embarked for 
Santa Barbara, but had to return to get horses, which 
they had hoped to get at Santa Barbara. Mervine, 
meanwhile, had landed at San Pedro, and had set out 
for Los Angeles, hoping to win the glory of defeating 
the revolters himself. His marines were met by a party 
of mounted Calif ornians, who dragged with them a single 
gun on wheels. They had but a few charges of powder, 

of New Mexico and California is an incomplete and one-sided but 
not valueless account, by one of the officers concerned in the closing 
scenes. Colton in his Three Years also gives some details, and so does 
Lieutenant Revere, in his Tour on Duty. Authorities concerning par- 
ticular scenes and controversies are very numerous, and many of them 
still inedited. 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 191 

but these they used so effectively, dragging their gun, 
after each discharge, out of Mervine's rifle range, that, 
before their little supply was exhausted, several of Mer- 
vine's men had been killed, and he had become discour- 
aged and had retreated to his ship. Stockton, arriving 
at San Pedro, and suffering from a lack of supplies, 
took his force by water to San Diego, where he landed 
in November, drove off the enemy, and established a 
camp. 

Meanwhile the Californians, who had been hoping for 
help from Mexico, found themselves threatened, although, 
for the moment, not very seriously, from a new quarter. 
General Kearny, namely, was approaching from New 
Mexico, but with only a small detachment of dragoons. 
The general had already completed his little conquest 
of New Mexico, and had now come on to California, of 
which he had been ordered to take possession, and in 
which he was commissioned to found a civil government. 
He too had been ordered, like Sloat, to " act in such a 
manner as best to conciliate the inhabitants, and render 
them friendly to the United States," but his orders were, 
of course, unlike Sloat's, subsequent to the date of the 
declaration of war. 1 He was, however, still expected to 
form his civil government, as far as possible, in con- 
formity with the existing conditions, and with all proper 
use of the actual native government and officers found 
in the territory. 

On the way from New Mexico, Kearny had been met 
by an express conveying dispatches from Stockton and 

1 See the often herein cited Dec. 19, p. 6. The instructions to 
Colonel Stevenson, issued later than Kearny's, when Stevenson was 
sent to California around the Horn, with his well-known regiment of 
volunteers, were to make the inhabitants " feel that we come as de- 
liverers " (loc. cit.,p. 12). 



192 CALIFORNIA. 

from Captain Fremont to the government at Washington, 1 
and announcing the conquest of the country. In conse- 
quence of the information that he thus received as to the 
condition of California, Kearny had left in New Mexico 
a part of his force, and, expecting Cooke with the " Mor- 
mon battalion " to follow soon, he had gone on with about 
one hundred dragoons. On his arrival in the territory, 
he found himself in the presence of a not very formid- 
able but active foe, who had for weeks been straining 
every nerve to procure the means for fighting. Kear- 
ny's own supplies were low. He managed to send a 
messenger to Stockton at San Diego, and the result was 
that a detachment, under Lieutenant Gillespie, consist- 
ing of about thirty-five mounted men, came to his aid. 
Gillespie joined Kearny near San Pascual. On the 
morning of December 6, the united forces, undertaking 
to attack the Californians at San Pascual, suffered se- 
rious loss, and gained nothing. This fight, which was 
to all intents and purposes a defeat, although Kearny 
himself did not confess the fact in his official reports, 
left his force in a very dangerous position, from which 
it was rescued by another detachment of Stockton's men. 
The forces of Kearny and Stockton were now united, 
and, without coming to a sufficiently definite agreement 
as to which of the two leaders, under the circumstances, 
ought to be considered as at the head of affairs in Cal- 
ifornia, both the officers in due time set out for Los 
Angeles together. On the 8th of January, 1847, they 
found the enemy, just beyond the San Gabriel River. 
They crossed the river in the face of the enemy's quite 
ineffective fire. The home-made powder of the Cali- 

1 See his testimony before the court-martial, Sen. Ex. Doc. 33, 1st 
Sess. 30th Congr., p. 41. 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 193 

fornians was in fact nearly useless, and the few charges 
of good powder that had proved so useful in meeting 
Mervine near San Pedro had exhausted the little stock 
that the Californians possessed of that kind. The com- 
modore, who had somewhat rashly, and in ignorance 
of the facts about the resources of the Californians, or- 
dered the troops to make the charge across the river, 
took great credit afterwards for this new triumph over 
a practically defenseless foe, whose harmless bullets 
dropped helplessly all about the men. The next day, 
the 9th, saw the last armed encounter of Californians 
and Americans. On the Mesa, north of the river, the 
mounted Californians undertook once more to resist 
their foe. But, after a few spirited but quite useless 
attempted charges, and some slight loss, they broke al- 
together and fled. Abandoning Los Angeles, the chiefs, 
with what force remained to them, retreated northward 
to meet Captain, or, as he was now oftener called since 
his battalion had been organized, Major Fremont, in 
order to surrender to him rather than to Stockton and 
Kearny, who had given notice of their intention to spare 
no men whose parole had been broken. 

Of Major Fremont's conduct since he had returned 
northward from Santa Barbara we need not speak in 
detail. He had shown becoming energy in getting 
horses and supplies for his battalion, and in raising fur- 
ther volunteers. The country, including the more 
peaceable natives, had had to suffer, meanwhile, from 
the loss of the horses and the supplies, but, at the mo- 
ment, some such seizures were simply necessary, and 
there was no cash on hand to pay for them ; so that the 
faith of the government had to be pledged instead. 
The misfortune that all this increased the old feeling of 
13 



194 CALIFORNIA. 

disgust for American rule was now, of course, inevita- 
ble, and the leader of the battalion could no longer pre- 
vent that. The further fact that many new-comers by 
the large and able immigration of 1846, fresh from 
across the plains, were enlisted in the battalion, and 
thus from the first moment met the Californians in a 
hostile spirit, was also a fact full of evil for the future, 
since many of the men of 1846 were destined to play no 
small part in the history of California, and were often 
to be men of great authority as pioneers. And of 
course they thenceforth remembered the Californians as 
treacherous rebels, and believed all the absurdities that 
they heard concerning the Bear Flag legend. But all 
this was now but one more link in the fatal chain of in- 
justice. Beyond this, however, the northern operations 
during the suppression of the revolt were generally hu- 
mane. The disturbances near Santa Clara and near 
Monterey were suppressed by detachments of our forces. 
The main body of the California battalion, proceeding 
southward, under its leader, crossed the Santa Inez 
Mountains on Christmas Day, in cold and storm, and 
then proceeded in the same direction far enough for 
Major Fremont to receive at Cahuenga, on January 11, 
in his capacity as military commandant of California, 
under Stockton's appointment, the capitulation of the 
Californian chiefs, whom, to the great disgust of Stock- 
ton, the gallant leader of the battalion was bold enough 
to pardon altogether, saying nothing of the broken pa- 
roles. His act was as generous as it was politic, and it 
had for him the advantage also of redounding to his 
personal glory, since in performing it he somewhat ex- 
ceeded the authority that even Stockton might be sup- 
posed to have given him (so long as the latter was 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 195 

actually carrying on the war), and yet did so in the ob- 
vious interests of humanity and good order. Both Stock- 
ton and Kearny were forced — at least in so far as con- 
cerned the amnesty — to accept the act once executed ; 
the amnesty was thus, once for all, complete, and the 
next scene was no longer one of war with Californians, 
but of a quarrel between Stockton and Kearny about 
the authority to govern the conquered territory. Into 
this quarrel, as we know, the young military command- 
ant of California under Stockton became involved, being 
appointed governor by Stockton. 

Of personal popularity, the leader of the California 
battalion had won back, through his crowning act of 
clemency to the parole-breaking leaders of the revolt, 
more than he personally had lost by those acts in the 
north that the natives now generally attributed to the 
secret commands of his government. With not unnat- 
ural pride he later pointed out before the court-martial 
at Washington how he, the " conqueror of California," 
could thenceforth have ridden unguarded and alone 
through the whole length of the province without any 
trace of personal danger. Apparently he had atoned for 
his monumental mischief-making ; but the atonement was 
only apparent. Although the native people, who knew 
nothing of the mystery, might fail to recognize the chain 
of causes that connected all their troubles with his pri- 
vate responsibility, the irrevocable wrong was now done. 
Clemency to individuals could win him great personal 
popularity, but it could never in fact unite the two peo- 
ples in the land whom he had now sundered in fierce 
hatred, nor atone for the ruin already wrought and 
thenceforth to follow. The very evils that his clemency 
moderated were all his own doing. 



196 CALIFORNIA. 

Of the details of the Stockton-Kearny-Fremont quar- 
rel we have here nothing to say. In all but technical 
right the young governor whom Stockton appointed 
appears almost throughout in a far better light than 
Kearny. And technical affairs of military law are of 
no concern here. It is enough to remind the reader 
that Governor Fremont was at length obliged to yield, 
and that in June, 1847, he set out for the East, across 
the plains, in company with Kearny, and thereafter 
was, as we have already seen, court-martialed for his 
disobedience of Kearny's orders. He was convicted 
on largely technical grounds, and pardoned by the pres- 
ident. He declined to accept the president's clemency, 
and resigned his commission. This court-martial only 
added to his popular glory, and discovered to the public 
nothing of his real offense of an earlier date. The cab- 
inet was bound, of course, to keep the Larkin intrigue 
secret. They had accepted, meanwhile, in an official 
document (the Report of the secretary of war), the 
first theory propounded by Senator Benton in his letter 
to the president, founded on his earliest private advices 
from Captain Fremont. This afore-mentioned theory, 
as we know, gave Castro's mythical onslaught as the 
justification of the Bear Flag affair. The cabinet had 
no means, therefore, of calling the young officer to pub- 
lic account for his true disobedience; nor had they, 
probably, in view of Senator Benton's position and in- 
fluence, even the wish to do so. For their purpose it 
was now enough that the country was ours. And so 
the whole matter was thenceforth, although not forever, 
enveloped in official prevarication and in mystery. 

But the quarrel of the chiefs had been yet one more 
serious evil to California. Some of the important pro- 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 197 

visions of the Cahuenga capitulation, relating, indeed, 
not to the amnesty but to the legal status of the inhab- 
itants, had been disregarded in later proclamations by 
Kearny, and were disregarded by his successor, Colonel 
Mason. The California battalion was refused pay by 
Kearny, and all the claims for its expenses remained 
then and for years afterwards unsatisfied, to the great 
displeasure of both American and native inhabitants. 1 
Nor was the situation immediately improved by the 
rapid and rather confusing increase of the American 
population during this period. Stevenson's regiment, 
together with some other United States forces, arrived 
by water. Cooke's " Mormon battalion " came in from 
New Mexico during the quarrel of the chiefs. The im- 
migration of 1846 was all in by the time the Donner 
party had been rescued, in the early months of 1847 ; 
and in July, 1846, there had appeared unexpectedly at 
San Francisco a shipload of Mormons, who had come 
from New York, by way of the Sandwich Islands, hoping 
to find refuge in this foreign land, which they now found 
to be, after all, an American land. The leader of these 
Mormons was the spirited, energetic, and coarse-fibred 
Samuel Brannan. The diversity of the purposes that 
had brought all these different companies of people 
hither ; the need of finding for all alike, both soldiers 
and civilians (now that the war in California was done), 
employment and support ; the uncertainty of the future 
in a country that, of course, could not technically be 
called ours before the campaigns in Mexico were done, — 
all this, together with the incapacity of the new-comers 

1 Larkin, in a letter to the State Department, June 30, 1847, in his 
somewhat rude speech, but still Avith effect, sets forth the distracted 
condition of the land just after the end of the quarrel of the chiefs. 



198 CALIFORNIA. 

themselves to understand perfectly their own delicate 
political situation, made this whole period of the inter- 
regnum a time of doubts, of problems, of complaints, 
and of weariness, as well, of course, as a time of most 
important and historically influential social life. 

V. THE CONQUERORS AS RULERS AND AS SUBJECTS; 
QUARRELS, DISCONTENT, AND ASPIRATIONS. 

For it is at just such moments that the American na- 
ture shows its best qualities. Amid all the mistakes 
and the foolish words that abound in such a time, one is 
surprised to note the general and instinctive moderation 
of the Americans concerned, considered as a community. 
They seem always on the point of trying to solve their 
social problems by violent and revolutionary methods ; 
and yet they refrain, not from fear, but by virtue of 
self-control. The American new-comers in California, 
under the new condition of things, naturally took the 
lead in everything. The natives, weary of the recent 
struggles, and generally hopeless and sullen, were glad 
to be let alone, and for the time they had little to say. 
It was the American who now complained bitterly of 
all the political, commercial, and social evils of this 
transition state ; who loudly called for a stable govern- 
ment ; who sometimes threatened to disregard United 
States authority altogether, and go back to Bear Flag 
conditions ; and who, in general, gave his soul free vent 
in his newly founded newspapers. 1 Yet it was the 

1 These have been already mentioned : the Calif omian (first pub- 
lished in Monterey, and later in San Francisco), and the California 
Star, published in San Francisco. The first of these papers was for a 
good while conducted, as we know, by Semple, and was founded in 
1846. The other, the Star, was founded by Brannan, at the begin- 
ning of 1847, and, although variously edited, remained under his in- 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 199 

American who, in the midst of his private discontent, 
and in fact hy virtue of this discontent, prepared the 
way for the birth of the sovereign Sta,te in 1849. 

For the constitution of 1849 was not, as people usu- 
ally conceive it, the product solely of the suddenly 
formed good resolutions of the new-coming gold-seek- 
ers. Had these men of the interregnum not preceded 
the gold-seekers, California would have had no state 
constitution in 1849. The constitutional convention 
was formed, as we shall see, partly of men that had 
lived in the territory through the interregnum, and only 
partly of new-comers that had political ambitions. In 
settling the problems of the convention, the men of the 
interregnum, despite their general ignorance of the pol- 
itician's arts, were highly influential, and about many 
matters their influence was decisive. To see, therefore, 
why California was ready for a constitution in 1849, we 
must consider the controversies of the interregnum itself. 
Otherwise the convention of 1849 seems like a social 
miracle, as in fact it has often been treated by his- 
torians. 

Technically, at the beginning of 1847, the Depart- 
ment of California was still a bit of Mexican territory, 
under the military rule of an occupying force of our 
own hostile army. The law of nations, as the United 
States officers themselves pointed out, gave the con- 
queror under such circumstances authority to ordain 
such temporary laws and executive regulations as he 
might choose. But seldom is a conquered country in 

fluence through 1847. Both papers were interrupted in their publica- 
tion by the gold discovery, which, in the summer of 1848, sent every- 
body to the mines. The Star I have used in the Bancroft Library file; 
the Calif omian in the San Francisco Pioneer Library file. 



200 CALIFORNIA. 

such a condition as was California in 1847. For the 
most active and prominent of the population were now 
of the nation of the conquerors. That Western set- 
tlers, and the Mormons who had sought for a refuge 
in the California wilderness, should he disposed to he 
treated as Mexicans that had been conquered by an 
American army is not natural. But if these settlers 
were of the conquering, and not of the conquered, 
party, and if the country was to be American, they 
naturally wished to enjoy the benefits of the conquest, 
and to be governed, after American fashion, by them- 
selves. Their wishes were for the time inadmissible 
and even dangerous ; but their desire was, in itself con- 
sidered, a laudaHe one. Technically, therefore, these 
settlers were a conquered people, like all the voluntary 
residents in any conquered province that is under 
military occupation. Actually, however, they thought 
themselves free as air, had in many cases themselves 
assisted in the conquest as members of Major Fre- 
mont's temporary battalion, and felt a healthy contempt 
for all military men, and for that little brief authority 
wherewith military men are too commonly puffed up. 
Moreover, the government, as represented by General 
Kearny, had declined to pay at present the claims of 
the men of the California battalion. This led these 
men, who were now civilians, to feel no exceeding love 
for the military government. And, worst of all, they 
lived from day to day under what they thought to be a 
very inconvenient system, namely, the so-called Mexican 
law. This system was indeed in an amusingly dilapi- 
dated condition at that time in the Department of Cali- 
fornia. If you take away all of a watch save the coiled 
mainspring and the main axle with its bearings, the 



TEE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 201 

watch goes for a second well enough, but you would not 
think it a valuable instrument. Now all that was left 
in California of the Mexican system of law was the 
local alcalde in each centre of population. His action 
might be prompt, for the mainspring of his will was in- 
deed there ; but how usefully he might act, or how 
thoughtfully, depended on the conditions into which this 
fragment of legal machinery might momentarily be 
brought. If something, say the judge's personal good 
sense, held on to the axle, the watch might run down 
more deliberately ; and if the hold was just right, the 
watch might even in some fashion be said to keep time. 
But the uncertainty was disheartening ; the vigor of the 
law was often very unpleasant ; and there was no im- 
mediate prospect of improvement. Very naturally the 
popular mind often turned to thoughts of self-govern- 
ment under a formulated constitution. 

The alcalde was the sole judicial officer whose func- 
tions were perfectly familiar in the daily lii'e of the na- 
tives of California. The simplicity of provincial litiga- 
tion, the imperfect organization of society, the jelly-like 
unsteadiness of the native government of the Depart- 
ment, had long united as causes to make the ordinary 
native regard a direct appeal to the alcalde in all cases 
of need as the principal, if not the only, way in which 
a private and non-political citizen could, of his own 
choice, have to do with the authorities. When the con- 
quest came, the office of the alcalde, therefore, alone 
survived the downfall of the very uncertain govern- 
mental institutions of the country. But when the al- 
calde survived, the Mexican laws could not be said to 
survive with him. Nobody in California had been at 
much trouble to learn or to apply to daily life any code 



202 CALIFORNIA. 

of laws whatsoever. The known functions of the al- 
caldes had long been recognized by mere tradition. 
Beyond those known functions the alcaldes had pos- 
sessed very great practical freedom of individual judg- 
ment. Their offices were not well supplied with law- 
books. The conquerors, in fact, found at first practically 
no books at all. The alcaldes appointed or elected 
after the conquest followed the devices of their own 
hearts. Not only were they commonly judges both of 
the law and of the evidence, but their position was often 
practically that of legislators. No wonder that their 
arbitrary powers aroused in the American mind many 
longings for self-government. These new alcaldes were 
often themselves Americans, and, both at San Francisco 
and at Sonoma, as well as in one or two other places, 
they ruled communities that were now almost wholly 
American. One could appeal from their decisions to 
the military governor, 1 but, practically, in respect of 
most minor matters, one had to submit to them. Was 
it then much to have helped conquer this vast land for 
one's beloved free country, if one found one's self forth- 
with under an authority more arbitrary and unintelli- 
gible than even the native authority itself would have 
been? 

The longings thus aroused were somewhat encouraged 
by the promises that Sloat, acting on the original official 
theory of our relations to California, had made to the in- 

1 During most of 1847 and 1848, this was Colonel Mason, successor 
to General Kearny, an able and careful officer, whose personal char- 
acter is well depicted for us in the Memoirs of General W. T. Sher- 
man, then, as lieutenant, his adjutant and secretary. See the Memoirs, 
yol. i. chap. i. p. 29, et passim. Mason's own official records, as pub- 
lished in the California Documents of 1850, are historically very im- 
portant. 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 203 

habitants in his proclamation of July 7, 1846. The in- 
habitants of California were to enjoy, as we have seen, 
" the privilege of choosing their own magistrates and 
other officers for the administration of justice among 
themselves," and Sloat, for reasons which had now be- 
come unintelligible to his successors, had invited the 
" judges, alcaldes, and other civil officers to retain their 
offices, and to execute their functions as heretofore." Al- 
though the revolt and its suppression had made Sloat's 
doings now seem very ancient history, the spirit of his 
proclamation was still remembered by the Americans. 
He had not intended to come as conqueror, even to the 
natives themselves. Yet now the very people for whose 
benefit and by whose help the actual conquest had been 
made could not get for themselves nearly as much as 
he had freely offered to the natives. If the letter of his 
proclamation could not be executed, why might not the 
spirit of it be regarded ? And yet, as the Americans 
felt, the later military governors had taken back nearly 
the whole of these promises of Sloat's, both in letter 
and in spirit. In several instances they interfered with 
the popular will concerning the choice of alcaldes ; x 
and they claimed yet more powers than they used. 

But this authority of the military government and of 
the alcaldes was not only arbitrary, but also, as we have 
suggested, somewhat vague, even in the definitions that 
were given to the public from official sources. If Sloat's 
proclamation only aroused delusive hopes, Stockton, on 
his part, before he abandoned his position of authority, 
had given to these Americans a perplexing explanation 

1 See General W. T. Sherman's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 30. Also see 
the California Documents of 1850 (let Sess. 31st Congr , Doc. 17), pp. 
318, 321, 325, for letters of Colonel Mason bearing on this matter. 



204 CALIFORNIA. 

of their position when he had told them that the country, 
as a province under military occupation in time of war, 
must indeed be governed by a military man, but that in 
the relations of the inhabitants with one another they 
must be governed by the " former laws and usages " of 
the Department. Now that position of Stockton's was 
obviously a perfectly sound one in theory, but unfortu- 
nately, as we have just seen, no American settlers knew 
or could just then find out what the former usages and 
laws had been. The conquerors were ignorant of Mex- 
ican law, even if that had ever been practically known 
or applied in the territory. Litigants, if they were na- 
tives or old inhabitants of the country, had a fashion of 
swearing to usages that they always interpreted in a 
sense wholly inconsistent with the claims of the opposing 
party ; and the result produced in the American settler's 
mind, when he heard these strange " laws and usages " 
talked over, was a certain longing to get back once more 
to the law of nature, by which, as we know, the Western 
settler often used to mean the constitution of the United 
States. Doubtless he was yet more fixed in his idea 
that the constitution of the United States is the law of 
nature, when he perceived that in some respects it was 
certainly very much opposed to the nature of the native 
Californian, whose former usages, whatever they might 
have been, seemed to the American settler to be the 
usages of a priest-ridden, down-trodden, ignorant, and 
altogether unnatural set of creatures, whom Providence 
had created to be replaced by the Americans. 

The discontent thus excited in the settler's breast 
finds expression in the discussions of the situation that 
are contained in the "California Star" for 1847 and 
1848. I have found the old file very fascinating read- 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 205 

ing, not because it contains very deep wisdom, but be- 
cause it illustrates so well the popular feeling. 

The " Star " opens the conflict, in no very dignified 
way, with its very first number, January 9, 1847. Un- 
der its first editor, Mr. E. P. Jones, the " Star " even 
permitted one of its correspondents, Mr. C. E. Pickett, 
later notorious in California, to go so far as to bring the 
liberty of the press into danger, by causing some one, 
apparently Captain Hull, who was in charge at Yerba 
Buena, to threaten that the military government would 
interfere to prevent further publication, unless greater 
prudence were shown in speaking of the condition of 
things. The time was in fact a rather critical one. 
In the south at that moment Stockton and Major Fre- 
mont were busy with the revolt, and no recent news 
had been received from them. General Kearny's ar- 
rival in the Department was still a mere rumor at Yerba 
Buena. Alcalde Lieutenant Bartlett was in the hands 
of a party of Californians, who had captured him dur- 
ing his absence from the town. Mr. Hyde was act- 
ing alcalde. At such a moment as this the editor de- 
clares that everybody is already tired of being subject 
to the whims of an alcalde, and insists that somebody 
shall at once find somewhere " the written laws of the 
territory," which shall be enforced " without regard to 
the statements of A, B, or C, in relation to certain cus- 
toms which probably never existed." Surely " the writ- 
ten laws of the country," he thinks, " can easily be ob- 
tained and published." This is the sanguine speech of 
an impatient man. Two years and more later General 
Riley found and published what he supposed to be these 
written laws, and then the people were nearly ready 
to supersede them. On January 23, 1847, the editor, 



206 CALIFORNIA. 

again taking up his parable, expresses strong objection 
to the tendency of alcaldes to make laws and rules hav- 
ing the force of law. The alcaldes, he maintains, never 
had such power in the olden time and ought not to have 
it now. " We heard a few days since that the alcalde 
of Sonoma had adopted the whole volume of Missouri 
statutes as the law for the government of the people in 
his jurisdiction. If this is allowed, we will have as 
many legislatures in California as we have alcaldes or 
justices of the peace, and the country will be thrown 
into more confusion in a short time than ever existed in 
any part of the world inhabited by civilized men." But, 
the editor goes on, if an alcalde cannot make a code, 
then surely he cannot make a single law, nor yet even a 
rule having the force of law. His business it is to find 
the law of the territory, and to enforce it. Surely this 
editorial remonstrance against the omnipotence of the 
alcaldes seems very reasonable. Yet it was almost vain. 
But, fair as much of this criticism was, there was an- 
other side to the situation. The subsequent stages of the 
controversy illustrate this other side, since they naturally 
lead us to a very important and fateful problem, which 
here for the first time looms up before the new-coming 
Americans. One thing that already made these new- 
comers especially restive was the uncertainty of land 
ownership. It is tragic to think of the handful of set- 
tlers in 1847 hoping to get pretty soon some definitive 
settlement of the terrible land question, which was to cost 
so much in blood and treasure for a generation to come ; 
but at all events one can see how naturally an Amer- 
ican settler's mind would turn to popular self-govern- 
ment as the immediate way out of the perplexities con- 
cerning land that the conquest had brought with it. It 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 207 

is also plain that the existence of a military govern- 
ment, uncomfortable as such a government then was, was 
the only guaranty of the native Californian population 
against simple spoliation on the part of the American 
settlers. Without treaty of guaranties, without time to 
impress on the American mind of the new-comers of 
1845 and 1846 the nature of their native customs and 
of their claims, the Californian land-owners would have 
had a poor chance in a squatter legislative assembly in 
California just then. That the danger was no illusion 
further facts shall forthwith show. 

On February 27, 1847, there is an editorial article 
in the " Star " on the civil government : it rejoices that 
the government has passed into such good hands as those 
of Shubrick and Kearny ; and it hopes that something 
will be done for the new settlers, in allowing them to 
settle at once on vacant lands, with the understanding 
that these shall be secured to them when the territory 
is ceded. One notices easily how dangerous it would 
have been to landed property in California to let an 
American settler decide what then constituted vacant 
land. 

On March 13, 1847, a correspondent of the " Star," 
signing himself " Paisano," writes to the editor a very 
ably stated and still a very dangerous letter on land 
grants, to the effect that the settlers coming in expected 
their tracts of land, and are sorry to find such great 
and indefinite grants already covering the face of the 
country. The indefiniteness that he describes is of the 
sort so well known to us since. "Those," he says, 
" who have recently emigrated to this country came 
here with the well-founded [?] expectation that under 
the Mexican laws they would be enabled to secure a 



208 CALIFORNIA. 

tract of land immediately upon their arrival ; but they 
have been disappointed ; and shall I state the cause of 
that disappointment ? Are the powers that be prepared 
to hear it ? . . . It is simply this : The United States 
have acquired possession." This is a sad evil, resulting 
from so great a good. The remedy is, according to 
Paisano, " that the legislature be organized without de- 
lay, and that immediately upon their organization they 
2>roceed to the enactment of a law upon the subject. 
Let this law provide that every man shall be entitled to 
a certain quantity of government land ; and let it further 
provide that, in order to acquire a legal right to the 
possession of the same, it shall be necessary for the 
claimant to have his lands recorded and surveyed. A 
law of this kind, I apprehend, would remove at once the 
chief cause of discontent among the people. But it will 
very likely be urged by those who take a more limited 
view of our legislative powers that they when organized, 
will have no authority to interfere in any manner with 
the disposition of the public lands ; yet it will be ob- 
served that nothing more is here suggested than to give 
to each individual a possessory right to a certain tract 
of land, upon certain conditions. But this suggestion 
is not made because it is supposed that the legislature 
will lack the power to go farther, for, in my opinion, this 
legislature, when organized, may enact all laws which 
the public exigence may require." 

The author of this letter I am able to identify as 
L. W. Hastings, a lawyer, later a member of the con- 
stitutional convention, an active man, and an emigrant 
leader, and prominent in emigrant affairs. Hastings is 
to be praised for what he earlier and later accomplished 
of good. But this particular scheme of his means on 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 209 

the face of it spoliation. This man, who " hopes," as 
he says about this time, in an advertisement of his law 
office, to acquire some day soon a knowledge of the 
Mexican land law and its application to Californian 
land, now, even while he admits that the face of the 
country seems covered with land grants in the very 
parts where men want to settle, still coolly proposes to 
settle the matter, not by the courts, but by the action of 
a legislature that would be under the control of the set- 
tlers themselves. The very grievance that he states is 
so stated as to show too clearly the remedy that he has 
in mind : Let the settlers, he says, " apply wherever 
they may, and to whomsoever they may, and the result 
is invariably the same : they are repulsed with an in- 
dignant ' This is all mine. ' This all-embracing occu- 
pant, after the very expressive and exclusive declama- 
tion here alluded to, goes on to describe his unbounded 
premises. ' That mountain,' says he, i on the east is 
the southeast corner of my farm, and that timbered 
country which you see in the distance is my northwest 
corner; the other corners of my farm are rather in- 
definitely marked at present, but I shall endeavor to 
have the rope applied to them also, as soon as the al- 
calde is at leisure.' " Well, if this indefinite state of 
affairs is the grievance, — and it is plainly a grievance, — 
what shall be thought of a man whose plan for settling 
the difficulty is not first of all a patient judicial exam- 
ination of the traditions, usages, laws, and grants under 
which these claims are made, but the calling of a land- 
hungry legislative assembly of the intruders themselves, 
to apply the precedents of the unoccupied Oregon wil- 
derness to the settlement of the ancient problems of 
California land law ? As for the facts, Mr. Hastings 
14 



210 CALIFORNIA. 

makes the common settlers' blunder, found also in Ide's 
proclamation in the spring of 1846, according to which 
the Mexican government had somehow guarantied to 
every American settler a tract of land immediately upon 
his arrival. This was a very bad blunder, since in fact 
every foreign settler upon Mexican territory who brought 
with him no passport was at that time, from the mo- 
ment he crossed the boundary, a violator of Mexican 
law, and legally subject to expulsion from the territory. 
There had been, indeed, for years no enforcement of this 
law in California ; but this act of grace, or of neglect, 
had been absurdly interpreted by the American intrud- 
ers, through some curious inner transformation, as an 
official guaranty of land grants to all of them. Finally, 
as to practical judgment, Hastings' scheme is of the 
wildest possible character, in view of the endless litiga- 
tion that such arbitrary acts of a self-constituted terri- 
torial legislature in California must ultimately have 
brought about. We have suffered many things of land 
in California ; but how much more should we not have 
been forced to endure if Mr. Hastings' territorial legis- 
lature had begun to tear down and to build up in 1847 ? 
Thus, then, one may see something of the other side 
of this question of government. To the settlers' rights 
must be opposed the need of patience. I have dwelt at 
length on this matter of Mr. Hastings' discussion of the 
land question, because it shows the state of opinion con- 
cerning governmental needs and prospects in California 
at that time, and helps us to trace the steps that led to 
the constitutional convention of 1849. The general dis- 
satisfaction that existed among the American settlers, 
the reasons for this dissatisfaction, the plans that were 
proposed as a solution, the considerations pro and con 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 211 

concerning these questions of settlers' rights, are all im- 
portant if one wants to understand the fine political 
talent that was soon to shine out so well in the actual 
political organization of the State. 1 

These discontents were as embarrassing to the really 
well-meaning military government as they were valua- 
ble in organizing the popular sentiment, and in prepar- 
ing the way for a state government. Mason himself 
was doubtless as just under such conditions as he could 
be. His influence was strictly conservative. He tried, 
for instance, to protect land-owners from squatters, and 
accepted any reasonable prima facie evidence of legal 
ownership as sufficient for his temporary purposes. 2 He 
could not grant what the people desired in the way of 
self-government, for of course he now had no authority 
to do more than to govern the land as a military con- 
queror. For since the conquest had actually involved 
force, the government, on hearing of the facts through 
the official reports, had now instructed accordingly, 3 and 
there was no thought of carrying out anything corre- 
sponding to the original cabinet plan about California. 
The land must wait until a treaty of peace, before Con- 
gress could do anything for it. Meanwhile it was to be 

1 The Californian is not behind its rival in any of these complaints 
about the situation, although its opening numbers had given a prom- 
ise of a strictly pacific editorial policy. For instance, on June 5, 1847, 
it complains bitterly of " military despotism ; " on June 12 it ex- 
presses freely the general discontent with the United States govern- 
ment in view of the non-payment of the California battalion claims; 
on July 17 complaints are renewed of the inefficiency of the military 
government; and on October 27 the editor proclaims that alcalde, gov- 
ernment is far worse than direct martial law. Desires for a territorial 
legislature are renewed and ably defended January 5, .1848, and again 
in the summer of that year. 

2 See the Cal. Doc. as cited above, pp. 322, 324, and elsewhere. 
8 See Cal. Doc. cited, pp. 244-246. 



212 CALIFORNIA. 

regarded as Mexican territory in our military posses- 
sion. Mason's duty was thus clear. 

But his position, nevertheless, was delicate. The 
changing instructions that were received from Washing- 
ton concerning a war tariff in California did not tend 
to make people more content with the government, hut 
deeply displeased both the merchants and the consum- 
ers. The force at Mason's command was furthermore 
limited, and the state of the country was politically dis- 
heartening : conquerors and conquered mixed confusedly 
together, discontent either loudly expressed or sullenly 
half concealed, and numberless social and legal prob- 
lems demanding immediate solution, — problems about 
solemnizing marriages, about giving divorces, about the 
treatment of the Indians, about the titles to town lots, 
about everything. 1 Mason was a good executive, but 
he would have been a great statesman also if he had 
been adequate to all this work. 

Vexatious as all these things were, they were yet very 
valuable events for the future commonwealth. For the 
people learned something of the real problems that the 
new social order would have to meet, and, in thus 'learn- 
ing, these American new-comers, so to speak, aged rap- 
idly in their ideas and plans. By 1849, as we shall see, 
they had become strict conservatives themselves, as 
against the hordes of the new-comers of the great year. 

1 InCal. Doc. as cited, p. 338, is a letter from Mason to the adjutant 
general at Washington, dated September 18, 1847, narrating the dis- 
charge of the Mormon battalion and the present difficulties of Mason's 
position, with "but two companies of regular troops, both of which 
are rapidly being diminished in strength by deaths and desertions." 
"All other troops," he says, "must claim and will receive their dis- 
charge the moment peace with Mexico is declared." As for the prob- 
lems before Mason, their variety may be judged by reading letters 
(loc. cit.), pp. 335, 344, 349, 355. 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 213 

And their conservatism it was that made a sound consti- 
tution possible. Had there been no troubles in 1847 
and 1848, there would have been much less order pos- 
sible in the early years of the state government, and in 
1849 there would have been no constitution made at all. 

VI. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE AMERICAN SAN FRAN- 
CISCO. 

Material prosperity slowly but surely grew in the 
active little community in the very midst of all this 
political confusion. The centre of the growth was al- 
ready at the village of San Francisco. To the little 
cluster of houses that within about ten years had grown 
up at Yerba Buena cove was given, early in 1847, by 
the consent of all concerned, and by the decree of the 
alcalde, the name that was its proper due, the historic 
name of San Francisco, which the bay, the mission, the 
presidio, and the district had all long since borne. 
The immediate occasion of the change of name from 
Yerba Buena to San Francisco was the projection and 
beginning of a new town called Francesca on the north- 
ern shore of the bay, a town which its projectors, Sem- 
ple and Larkin, intended to make a commercial centre 
for this future great country of California. The Yerba 
Buena people were clever enough to see the possible im- 
portance of identifying in name their own town with 
the great bay, and the dangerous advantage of the name 
Francesca in comparison with their own present local 
name. They had the first and best right to the name 
San Francisco, and were not slow to adopt it. They 
were, in fact, within the boundaries of the then legally 
existent pueblo of San Francisco. 1 The name of the 
projected Francesca was hereupon changed to Benicia. 
1 See, on the matter of the name, the Annals of San Francisco, pp. 



214 CALIFORNIA. 

In March, 1847, General Kearny had authorized by 
proclamation the sale of the beach and water-lots on the 
east front of San Francisco, and the alcalde, then Ed- 
win Bryant (the author of " Three Years in California "), 
gave notice of the sale on March 16. Kearny had, of 
course, no real legal authority in the matter, and the 
proclamation was issued, in response to the request of 
the people of San Francisco, chiefly in order to give the 
sale a show of authority. 1 The sale itself seemed to 
the people a necessity for the growth of their town, and 
the titles thus conveyed, while in later years giving rise 
to no small question and difficulty, were finally recog- 
nized, through both legislative and judicial action. 
Further sales of town lots and the new O'Farrell sur- 
vey of the town streets marked yet more steps in the 
progress of the settlement during the summer and au- 
tumn of 1847. By the census of August, 1847, there 
were 459 persons in the village, which still excluded 
from its limits the mission settlement. Of these 51 
were under five years of age, and 32 more between five 
and ten. Of the whole number 138 were girls or 
women. 2 

The drawings of the village and of its surroundings, 
which are preserved to us from that early day, have no 
small interest to any one who knows the present great 

178, 188; J. S. Hittell's History of San Francisco, pp. 110, 111. The 
legal existence of the pueblo at this time was, as is well known, not 
proven to the satisfaction of our courts until long afterwards ; but the 
application of the name to the bay, presidio, mission, district, was an 
old story. 

1 See the Annals, as cited, p. 181 ; Hittell's History of San Fran- 
cisco, p. 113; Cal. Documents of 1850 (as cited), pp. 291, 302, 333. 

2 Annals, p. 176. On the further sales of lots and O'Farrell's sur- 
vey, see Annals, pp. 182, sqq., and Hittell's History of San Francisco, 
pp. 114, sqq. 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 215 

city, and suggest many comparisons, as well as many re- 
flections on what might have been. One finds wood- 
cuts from some of these drawings in the "Annals." 
The little cluster of houses stood for the most part a 
short distance back from the low, curving beach of Yerba 
Buena cove, a cove very early filled up by the busiest 
portions of the city of the gold period. Telegraph Hill 
loomed up close above the village on the north side. 
Southward the distance was greater, across the lowlands 
to Rmcon Hill, and to the point that in that direction 
bounded the cove. Going westward from the beach, 
one almost immediately began to ascend those steep hills 
over which, in the present day, the characteristic cable 
street-railroads of San Francisco carry numberless pas- 
sengers towards the now fine dwelling-house regions of 
the " western addition " beyond the hills. These steep 
hills, then covered with the low shrubbery of the penin- 
sula, are now at one point crowned by those tediously 
vast "palaces" of certain millionnaires, which a true 
San Franciscan points out from the bay to the new- 
comer on the ferry-boats, as among the most notewor- 
thy landmarks of the place. 

The peninsular region in which this village of 1847 
lay was a sad and desolate one, save for the glorious 
outlook northward and eastward, to be gained from the 
hills above the village, and save also for the ruggedly 
graceful outlines of these hills themselves. In the hills 
lay, in fact, a great opportunity for the possible future 
building of a truly stately chVy. They together formed 
several fine amphitheatres between their curving sides, 
they presented noble contours to the traveler approach- 
ing by the bay, and they left enough level ground at 
their bases to make, with the addition of land to be 



216 CALIFORNIA. 

formed by the inevitable filling in of the cove (and, in 
time, of Mission Bay also), ample room for the necessi- 
ties of the commercial life of the city. But otherwise 
the place, through all the dry season of the year, was one 
of the most windy, barren, and dismal spots that could 
well have been found in a temperate climate. Over 
the stately and graceful Twin Peaks, beyond the mis- 
sion, the gray ocean fog, then as now, slowly crept east- 
ward, in the chilly summer afternoons, towards the shiv- 
ering town, while the sharp sand was driven by the brisk 
wind, both along the shores and amid the gloomy low 
sand hills to the southwest, towards the mission ; and 
while one could see from any hill the white-capped waves 
gleaming all over the great bay to the north and east. 
The almost treeless peninsula, at such times, was a place 
to which anchorites might well have resorted to medi- 
tate in windy solitude upon the woes and sins of an ac- 
cursed world, amid this monotonous wilderness of low 
shrubbery, of drifting sand, and of steep hill-slopes. 
Even now, with all the cheerful noise and strife of an 
exceptionally active city to distract one's mind from 
gloomy topics, a summer afternoon out-of-doors, in San 
Francisco, is a bitter penance to every one but the most 
devoted of San Franciscans. And, meanwhile, nearly 
all the fine opportunities that the hill-contours offered, 
to compensate by dignity of aspect for the dreariness of 
the summers, have been wasted, and are now gone for- 
ever, unless indeed the city should some day undergo a 
revolutionary change not only of architecture, but also of 
plan. It is characteristic of the progressive American 
that, in most parts of the East, and throughout the great 
West, at least in all those regions where there are either 
bluffs or hills to be dealt with, he destroys a landscape 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 217 

in just so far as he builds a city. Well-planned cities, 
however, would ennoble the landscapes. At San Fran- 
cisco there was but one great natural beauty in the situa- 
tion of the city that the builders could ruin. They could 
not ruin the wonderful outlook eastward and north- 
ward from the hills, for that was beyond their reach ; 
and they could not ruin either many trees or streams at 
the point where they built their city, for there were few 
to ruin. But they could in large measure ruin their hill- 
contours, and the beautifully curving amphitheatres that 
these bounded. This, of course, they did, and so for all 
time they have defaced what might have been the foun- 
dation for a most stately and imposing city. As one 
now comes to San Francisco by water, one begins to see 
at once what was done with the rugged dignity of the 
sombre hills that surrounded the old village of 1847. 
These hills have been outraged and insulted with mani- 
fold cruelties : never-finished grading undertakings have 
uselessly torn them in some places ; in others one has 
given them over to dirty and degraded little houses ; and 
where the houses are either truly excellent, or only pre- 
tentiously grand, the perfectly straight streets disfigure, 
as with long cruel stripes, the sturdy forms of the noble 
hills. For these streets pass over the hills in merci- 
lessly undeviating parallel lines, and by the sides of the 
streets, on the breathlessly steep ascents, the wooden 
houses seem to be perpetually toppling, while they still 
find some mysterious way of holding their desperate 
places on the slopes, and of keeping still in their stiff 
military array. The village of 1847, from the moment 
it began to grow, planned an impious assault upon the 
hills by means of these straight streets, and the life of 
the town was for years a savage struggle with the land- 



218 CALIFORNIA. 

scape. Nor has the struggle ever ceased. Even now, if 
one walks out a little beyond the mission, one finds very 
much such a region as that in which the Yerba Buena 
village was first set down : desolate, wind-swept hills, 
with fine contours, with a magnificent outlook towards 
the bay, and with often beautifully outlined amphithe- 
atre valleys between adjacent hills. Into this region 
the southwestern part of the city is now growing, with 
just the same cruel prejudices about straight streets, 
with just the same determination to hack and hew, to 
bruise and to torture these hill-contours, until the city 
shall become in this region also what in its older parts 
it now inevitably seems at first sight from the bay : a 
planless wreck of a city, instead of what those who 
study its map suppose it to be, namely, a very well laid 
out and well arranged city. For the geometrical sim- 
plicity of the plan on paper means brutal confusion of 
aspect when applied to these hills. In the " western ad- 
dition " one finds to-day very many beautiful features ; 
but all the rest of the city is, as to general plan, a lost 
opportunity. 

Such fashions of building cities are characteristic of 
our people everywhere. Commercial necessity, it will 
be said, built San Francisco, and left no time for seek- 
ing beauty. But, as the ancient writer said to those 
who complained of the tedious preparation required in 
studying an art, " we ourselves make our own time 
short." If the San Franciscan had never wasted time 
or money on wholly useless mutilation of his hills, or on 
wholly worthless enterprises in street-grading, his spare 
time for improving the general aspect of his city would 
have been longer. And the great art of at least letting 
alone such portions of the land about or in a town as 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 219 

one does not actually need, until such time as one shall 
be able to beautify them, is an art unknown to us Amer- 
icans, who can, slowly indeed, and with many mistakes 
and troubles, build at length one work of art, and one 
only, namely, a well-constituted State, and who ruth- 
lessly deface nearly every other object that comes in our 
way. For the ugliness of most of our cities we bear a 
national responsibility. San Francisco is far better than 
many. 

The village from which all this was to grow lived, in 
1847, a life not only of considerable commercial activity 
and of many political anxieties, but also of much private 
joviality and good-fellowship. The people had their 
social gatherings, their balls, their dinners, and their 
suppers, and already tasted the social freedom charac- 
teristic of California life. The 4th of July, and also 
the 7th, were celebrated in 1847, the second of the two 
anniversaries commemorating, of course, the raising of 
the flag. Nor were the inhabitants altogether careless 
about a school for their children. The subject was agi- 
tated in 1847, and a public school was actually opened 
in April, 1848. The general commercial and agricul- 
tural development of the country was meanwhile the ob- 
ject of much interest at San Francisco. The energetic 
Sam Brannan already knew no limit to his hopes or to 
his plans. A number of the " Star," prepared under his 
direction in March, 1848, for circulation in the East, 
contained an article by Dr. Fourgeaud on the resources 
of California, — an article which reads like a prophecy 
of what would be said many years later, after the gold 
excitement had passed by, and when the agricultural 
development of the State had fairly begun. 1 The ar- 
1 See Hittell's History of San Francisco, p. 97.. This number of 



220 CALIFORNIA. 

tide dwells on the certainty of a great agricultural fu- 
ture for the territory, and naturally makes agriculture 
the mainstay of future prosperity, remarking meanwhile 
that the mineral wealth of the territory is believed to be 
also great. By the middle of March, 1848, the little 
village had a population of above eight hundred, and 
contained about two hundred houses. 1 And now came 
the great news. 

VII. GOLD, NEW-COMERS, AND ILLUSIONS. 

That gold had been discovered some time before the 
importance of the discovery was generally understood, 
even in California ; that until April, 1848, little excite- 
ment was occasioned in towns on the coast ; that then 
the excitement about the gold rapidly grew, and soon 
almost depopulated the villages ; and that thereafter the 
summer of 1848 was full of a new and infinitely won- 
drous life, amid adventures, good fortune, and hard- 
ships, — all this every reader of California annals knows 
without long explanation. And every such reader 
knows, too, the tale, so simple in its main incident, so 
confused, contradictory, and tangled in its details, about 
the first discovery of the gold. How Sutter's mill, near 
the later town of Coloma, was just being prepared in 
the wilderness for the work of sawing the wood to be 
brought from the mountain forests near by ; how, in 
January, 1848, Marshall, as superintendent of the work, 
tried to enlarge his tail-race by little successive artificial 
freshets of water sent down through the race ; how the 

the Star is not infrequently to be met with now in Eastern libraries, 
and is in fact the only number of this paper that is at all common in 
collections of California material. 
1 Annals, p. 200. 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 221 

water washed out into sight a few gold-particles along 
the banks of the race ; and how Marshall found them 
and tested them, — all this story is the property of every 
pioneer. How, furthermore, Marshall took the news to 
the incredulous Sutter, and forced him to believe it ; 
how the workmen at the mill came to know, in their 
turn, of the gold ; how various efforts were made to 
keep the matter secret from all but a few, and how the 
efforts failed, — these, indeed, are details about which 
the traditions somewhat differ, but these are things of 
only antiquarian interest. Marshall himself, who got 
such a factitious fame by the event that made him rather 
than another the purely accidental discoverer of that 
which he had taken no pains to find, and which some- 
body must inevitably have found very soon, — Mar- 
shall, poor fellow, won, besides fame, little but sorrow 
from the accident, and his recent death has left the nu- 
merous writers of obituary biographies with absolutely 
nothing to say about him, save that he did succeed in 
picking up the gold-grains, and that he did prove him- 
self thenceforth to be an utterly incapable man. For 
the visionary Sutter, too, the discovery was to be a ca- 
lamity, although, again, largely by his own fault. But 
at the moment, the discovery, once appreciated, seemed 
to all concerned as wonderful and good a thing for their 
personal prospects as it actually was for the fortunes 
of California, of the United States, and of the world. 
These sanguine early discoverers could not yet know 
that great gold mines, while they vastly benefit the 
world, are, for the communities that possess them, tre- 
mendously severe moral tests, and, for by far the most 
of the individual miners, inevitable ruin. 

We are, in fact, now and henceforth to deal with a 



222 CALIFORNIA. 

California that was to be morally and socially tried as no 
other American community ever has been tried, and that 
was to show as we Americans have not elsewhere so com- 
pletely and in so narrow compass shown both the true 
nobility and the true weakness of our national character. 
All our brutal passions were here to have full sweep, and 
all our moral strength, all our courage, our patience, our 
docility, and our social skill were to contend with these 
our passions. Whoever wants merely an eulogistic story 
of the glories of the pioneer life of California must not 
look for it in history, and whoever is too tender-souled 
to see any moral beauty or significance in events that 
involve much foolishness, drunkenness, brutality, and 
lust must find his innocent interests satisfied elsewhere. 
But whoever knows that the struggle for the best things 
of man is a struggle against the basest passions of man, 
and that every significant historical process is full of 
such struggles, is ready to understand the true interest 
of scenes amid which civilization sometimes seemed to 
have lapsed into semi-barbarism. It is, of course, im- 
possible to read this history without occasionally feeling 
a natural horror of the crimes that for a while were 
so frequent ; but one's horror is itself a weakness, and 
must give way, for the most part, to a simple realistic 
delight in the jovial fortitude wherewith this new com- 
munity bore the worst consequences of its own sins, and, 
after a remarkably short time, learned to forsake the 
most serious of them. Early California history is not 
for babes, nor for sentimentalists ; but its manly wick- 
edness is full of the strength that, on occasion, freely 
converts itself into an admirable moral heroism. 

For the moment, the gold excitement simply deprived 
the settlements outside of the gold-mines of all signifi- 



TEE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 223 

cance. In the course of May and June nearly every- 
body went to the mines, — from San Francisco, from 
Monterey, from San Jose, from all the settlements. 1 
The military officers alone resisted the temptation to 
abandon present engagements for the new work of min- 
ing, and the officers themselves could to some degree 
satisfy their natural curiosity in a proper way by visiting 
the mines for official purposes. So it was when Colonel 
Mason, duly escorted, examined the mining region in 
June and July of 1848, and gathered facts for the fa- 
mous letter of August 17, which, when it became known 
in the East, formed, with Larkin's letters to Buchanan 
on the same topic, the official and authentic basis for 
the great California gold excitement in the East during 
the following winter and spring. 2 The skilled miners 
in the territory were very few, but men happened to 
begin with the discovery of certain very rich placers. 
Men like Marshall and Sutter, or like the well-known 
settler Sinclair, or like John M. Murphy of San Jose, 
employed, or attempted, with greater or less success, 
to employ, Indians to do the work of gold-mining for 
them, and altogether the individual strokes of good 
fortune in the summer of 1848 were very numerous. 
In the mines, meanwhile, were many deserting soldiers 
and sailors, and the executive arm of the provisional 
government grew daily weaker. The miners were, in- 

1 See the Annals, pp. 202, sqq. ; Hall's History of San Jose, pp. 
190, sqq. ; Tuthill's History of California, chap, xviii. ; Coltort's 
Three Years, chaps, xviii. and xix. ; and General Sherman's Memoirs, 
vol. i. pp. 40, sqq., for accounts of the immediate effects of the first 
gold excitement. Other authorities could easily be given. The news- 
papers, indeed, soon fail us, for the excitement stopped both of them. 

2 See Mason's letter in the Cal. Doc. of 1850, pp. 528, sqq., and the 
same in the beginning of Foster's Gold Mines of California (New 
York, 1849), and Larkin's letters in Foster, pp. 17, sqq. 



224 CALIFORNIA. 

deed, already declared on good authority to be trespass- 
ers, since they were mining on what the expected treaty 
would make United States public land ; * and when the 
treaty became known it only made the legal aspect of 
the matter clearer. But then, for the present, the exec- 
utive was powerless to prevent this trespassing ; and as 
to the future, the miners were destined to remain, by 
their own choice and by the tacit permission of our gov- 
ernment, unmolested trespassers on the public lands un- 
til the passage of the act of 1866, authorizing the survey 
and sale of the mineral lands of California. 

The tempting subject of the social condition and of 
the adventurous fortunes of the mines, during that first 
golden summer, we must here postpone. It would lead 
us into questions that our next chapter can best consider 
in their due connection with the general history of the 
crises of the early mining life. We are still concerned 
with the territory at large, and must ask ourselves, first 
what social changes the gold discovery brought upon 
the country from without, and then how the reaction led 
the already well-prepared men of the interregnum to in- 
sist upon leading the new-comers to submit to a state 
constitution. For the State, as we have already de- 
clared, was the child of the men of the interregnum j 
while the new-comers furnished only, on the one hand, a 
few professional lawyers and politicians to help in the 
deliberations of the convention, and, on the other hand, 
the tacit assent of a crowd of generally careless miners, 
most of whom took far too little present interest in any- 

1 The treaty of peace between the United States and Mexico was 
not officially known in California before the issue of Mason's procla- 
mation of August 7, 1848, announcing the fact. See the Cal. Doc. p. 
590. 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 225 

thing but a quick fortune and an early voyage home. 
These new-comers could have done little in the first 
year, if the men of the interregnum had not been fully 
ready for the work of state-building ; but, at the same 
time, the coming of these vast crowds forced the hand 
of the executive, and so helped to give the men of the 
interregnum the popular government for which they had 
so long been striving. 

The new-comers, by sheer force of numbers, must, 
however, in any case, thenceforth give to the State its 
character. It is important for us to understand what 
manner of men they were, and in what spirit they came. 
They were, in the first place, as all who describe them 
are never weary of telling us, a very miscellaneous com- 
pany, containing people from all parts of the world. 
Yet we shall never understand them if we suppose that 
the cosmopolitan character of the mass as a whole re- 
sulted in a truly cosmopolitan social life. The effective 
majority in all the chief communities was formed of 
Americans, and here, as everywhere else in our land, 
the admixture of foreigners did not prevent the commu- 
nity from having, on the whole, a distinctly American 
mode of life. The foreigners as such had, of course, 
no political powers, made no laws, affected the choice of 
no officers, and had no great tendency to alter the more 
serious social habits, the prejudices, or the language of 
Americans. The mass of the Americans in California 
never grew to understand the foreigners as a class, any 
more than we have elsewhere understood foreigners. 
A pioneer tradition one indeed finds, expressed in va- 
rious ways, to the effect that the Americans in the mines 
" talked a language half-English, half-Mexican ; " but 
this tradition must be understood to mean simply that 
15 



226 CALIFORNIA. 

the majority of these pioneers mispronounced a large 
number of Spanish proper names and several of the 
commoner Spanish words and phrases, and were very 
proud of the accomplishments that they thus showed. 
No one who has grown up in California can be under 
any illusion as to the small extent to which the American 
character, as there exemplified, has been really altered 
by foreign intercourse, large as the foreign population 
has always remained. 

The foreign influence has never been for the American 
community at large, in California, more than skin-deep. 
One has assumed a very few and unimportant native 
Californian ways, one has freely used or abused the few 
words and phrases aforesaid, one has grown well accus- 
tomed to the sight of foreigners and to business relations 
with them, and one's natural innocence about foreign 
matters has in California given place, even more fre- 
quently than elsewhere in our country, to a superficial 
familiarity with the appearance and the manners of 
numerous foreign communities. But all this in no wise 
renders the American life in California less distinctly 
native in tone. The theatre, the opera, and the out- 
of-door amusements of the early American population 
were, as far as I can see, the social institutions most 
affected by foreign influences ; and the foreign people 
have indeed had great effect upon these matters ever 
since. But that resulted, and still results, from our own 
naturally earnest, bare, and unaesthetic national life. 
An amusement is usually something external to us, some- 
thing that as a nation we cannot invent, and that we 
therefore have to accept, with little independent criticism, 
from foreign sources. So, in early California, the for- 
eigners soon furnished not only the good music and 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 227 

some of the theatrical performances, 1 but also numerous 
bull-fights and many gambling-halls. We accepted all 
these delights indiscriminately and submissively, and 
supported them very generously. In time we outgrew 
the bull-fights and abolished the public gambling-halls ; 
but we have always in California remained indebted to 
the foreign population for much amusement of the other 
and higher sorts, of which, indeed, they have given us a 
great many really excellent experiences. An amusement, 
good or bad, remains, however, to the last an external 
addition to the average American's life, and you cannot 
call a community of Americans foreign in disposition 
merely because its amusements have a foreign look. 
The causes that began to work in early California, and 
that have not rendered the modern American California 
as distinct and original a community as it is, must be 
sought elsewhere than in the influences furnished from 
foreign sources. 

More important, then, both for the life of the early 
community and for the growth of the State ever since, 
has been the fact that the Americans present repre- 
sented all parts of the Union. The native American 
Californian grows up to-day with some Northern or 
Southern sympathies, since his parents have taught him 
to have them, but usually without strong Northern or 
Southern animosities. If he pretends to have such, a 
short change of dwelling-place to a suitable community 
is enough to remove them. The old feelings that have 
ruled a warring generation east of the Rocky Moun- 
tains he cannot enter into. Much of the old bitterness 

1 Although, indeed, the American theatre also was better developed 
in San Francisco, in the early years, than was any other form of 
American amusements. 



228 CALIFORNIA. 

amuses him, too, as he hears of it also at home. For 
many early settlers, Northern and Southern men of the 
old days before the war, have not forgotten in Califor- 
nia their ancient quarrels, and they yet express their 
sectional feelings in many emphatic ways, although 
scarcely with the ardor still known in some older parts 
of the country. But with the young Californian these 
old differences, save when viewed as matters of history, 
are little more than mere phrases. He has seen these 
Northern and Southern men together all his life, and to 
him they are what they are, simply Californians, with 
various trainings and tastes and prejudices, and with 
numberless political and private quarrels, but very much 
alike notwithstanding. He may join in repeating the 
bitter phrases himself, but you see at once, by the me- 
chanical glibness wherewith he uses them, how little they 
mean to him. 

Very early, however, this relatively peaceful mingling 
of Americans from North and South had already deeply 
affected the tone of California life. There was never a 
thought of border warfare in the early days of Califor- 
nia. There were no such troubles as those later in Kan- 
sas. One object of very many at first was to forget the 
unhappy sectional quarrels that had prevailed at home. 
California fell into the ranks of free States without any 
sort of struggle carried on upon her own soil. There 
were numerous plots, no doubt, for a future division of 
her territory, and for the introduction of slavery into the 
southern half ; but these plots related to the future. 
For the moment California was non-partisan. This 
purely non-partisan stage in politics was indeed brief. 
By 1851 the Democratic party was well organized, and 
thenceforth, until the war, it ruled the State. In the 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 229 

days of its rule, Southern politicians predominated in 
the State's affairs, and sectional intolerance was often 
enough and bitterly enough expressed. But there was 
still this to be noted in California : the hotter the South- 
ern politicians grew, the greater, on the whole, seemed 
to wax their political influence over Northern men. The 
Northern men were, however, all the time in a majority, 
but they submitted to the dictation of Southern politi- 
cians. They did this partly because, as Californians, 
they had everything to gain by avoiding bitter sectional 
conflicts, and partly for the simple reason that the South- 
ern politicians were, as a class, by far the ablest politi- 
cians in the field. There was, for instance, nobody in 
California before the war who could cope on equal 
terms, as a skillful party leader, with Senator Gwin 
save one, David Broderick, and he was by family and 
training a characteristic Irish-American, not a typical 
Anglo-American at all. So, just because they were 
abler managers, the Southerners remained nearly al- 
ways at the head, until the war came. Then, indeed, 
the Northern business men of the State were far too pa- 
triotic, not to say far too clever, to be led into secession 
by any politicians, however skillful, and for the entire 
war period they kept down all Southern influences with 
becomingly stern majorities ; yet only to give a large 
place once more to these same influences from almost 
the outset of the reconstruction period. Since then 
California has been a " doubtful State " in politics. 

In short, then, the North, despite all quarrels, grew 
from the outset nearer to the South in California than 
it has done elsewhere. Americans came to understand 
one another as Americans ; and in doing so, the North- 
ern men proved more plastic than the Southern. The 



230 CALIFORNIA. 

type of the Northern man who has assumed Southern 
fashions, and not always the best Southern fashions at 
that, has often been observed in California life. The 
Northern man frequently felt commonplace, simple- 
minded, undignified, beside his brother from the border 
or from the plantation. There was an air of sometimes 
half-barbarous but always, in some mysterious fashion, 
dignified freedom about this picturesque wanderer from 
the Southern border, who was doubtless often able to 
seem of much more social significance abroad than he 
could have dared assume at home. The Northern man 
admired this wanderer's fluency in eloquent harangue, 
his vigor in invective, his ostentatious courage, his abso- 
lute confidence about all matters of morals, of politics, 
and of propriety, and his inscrutable union in his public 
discourse of sweet reasonableness with ferocious intol- 
erance. The Northern man was fluent, too, but with a 
less sustained eloquence, with more of a certain formal 
mildness and good-humor in his public behavior. He 
had great confidence in all good public speakers ; he had 
a strong disposition to compromise public differences ; he 
indeed could not be fooled about a matter of business by 
any Southerner ; but both the sweet reasonableness and 
the ferocious intolerance overcame him in debate. He 
often followed the Southerner, and was frequently, in 
time, partly assimilated by the Southern civilization. 

It is because of this intimate union of Northern and 
Southern men that we think early California so good 
a place for showing the American character, as distin- 
guished from any local character. Yet how this Amer- 
ican character was at first shown we can understand 
only in case we remember the wandering and fortune- 
hunting spirit in which all these men alike came. 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 231 

Families there indeed were among the early immi- 
grants. One who, like the present writer, is a son of 
pioneers of 1849, is not disposed to forget the fact that 
there were such families. Yet the women are univer- 
sally known to have been at best very few. The men, 
therefore, had generally left their responsibilities else- 
where. We shall have so many occasions to remind 
the reader of this familiar fact henceforth that we need 
only touch upon it here. Yet the resulting irrespon- 
sible and adventurous mood of the community can best 
be understood by a few references to contemporary 
sources. 

For nearly all these men expected, of course, to go 
back soon to their homes, vastly wealthy. The gold 
fever of 1848-49 in the East, after the news reached 
the Atlantic, has often been described. All energetic 
and progressive men were apt to be affected by it. The 
life promised was wholly new, adventurous, golden, — 
a fine contrast to the commonplace work of the older 
American communities, a perfect satisfaction to our 
wandering race instincts. But of course this natural ex- 
citement was not left to itself. There were people in- 
terested in increasing it by deliberate lies. The false 
dreams of hopeful youth were thus supplemented by 
forged documents, which seemed to prove the truth of 
golden wonders that were in fact mere inventions. I 
have before me, as I write, such a lying document, 
printed in New York, and dated 1848 ; a pamphlet, 
namely, purporting to be written by one H. I. Simpson, 
of Stevenson's Regiment, 1 and called " Three Weeks in 

1 According to Mr. H. H. Bancroft's Pioneer Lists, there is no such 
name on the rolls of Stevenson's Regiment. The pamphlet was 
printed by Joyce & Co. of 40 Ann Street, New York, and the copy 
known to me is in Harvard College Library. - 



232 CALIFORNIA. 

the Gold Mines." I have traced to a source in an au- 
thentic letter, published first in the " Californian " at 
San Francisco, July 15, 1848, and reprinted in Foster's 
" Gold Regions of California," 1 a part of the material 
used by the Avriter of the pamphlet, who has misunder- 
stood his sources in such wise as to make amusing geo- 
graphical and other blunders. 2 Yet his literary skill is 
admirable, and his lying is so circumstantial, and his 
stolen authentic information is often, meanwhile, so elab- 
orate and accurate, that one reads him with a feeling 
of profound respect. 

Our interest in such pamphlets is the kind of mood to 
which they appealed, and which they inflamed. " Simp- 
son " describes a life of leisurely gold-gleaning. His 
creator knows how not to seem too extravagant, even 
while lying. In the course of the " three weeks," one 
goes in quite impossible stages from Sutter's Fort to the 
foot of the "Shastl" peak (evidently Mount Shasta), 
and returns. One walks so far, not because the gold is 
scarce (on the contrary, one finds it lining stream-bot- 
toms all about), but solely because one wants to get a 
notion of the size of the gold region. Ten days of these 
" three weeks " are, however, spent by two men, with 
almost no implements, in picking up $50,000 of gold. 

1 Page 27 of the book, as heretofore cited. 

2 The writer of the authentic letter above cited, who had gone to 
the mines in May, or earl}' in June, correctly described the country 
passed over as then " covered with the richest verdure, intertwined 
with flowers of every hue." The lying pamphlet copies this expres- 
sion with slight verbal variations, but incautiously makes " Simp- 
son " apply it, in the forged letter, to the road from San Francisco to 
San Jose in the latter part of August ! " Simpson " also makes (p. 6 
of the pamphlet) this road to San Jose' pass through the "delta" 
formed by the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, and he finds San 
Jose* itself lying in this "delta " ! 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 233 

During the rest of the time the yield is much more mod- 
erate, just because one is wandering, or is talking over 
theories about the great central gold vein, whence all 
this gold no doubt " streamed " or was " thrown out," 
in the old " volcanic " days. 1 Of course one has to work 
for one's gold. One does not exactly pick the lumps 
" oil the ground," as the song " Susannah " stated the 
case. " Simpson's " creator is too clever to say that. 
The great point is that one's labor is certain to be easily 
and vastly and steadily rewarded, and that one's first 
simple guesses about where the gold is to be found 
prove perfectly correct. One's wandering merely veri- 
fies all predictions. One's companions are also the 
best of fellows. The life is perfectly happy. Why 
should not all one's friends come, too, and make their 
fortunes among these inexhaustible treasure-houses ? All 
this tale is presented not vaguely, nor with merely stupid 
exaggerations. The extravagance is veiled with a skill- 
fully false show of manly reserve and moderation. One 
admits that there are some varieties of fortune. One 
adds meanwhile to the actually absurd and mendacious 
tale multitudinous little facts, — descriptions of land- 
scape, of people, of geographical matters, with names 
and dates also freely given ; and the names and the 
local facts are often real, and are then easily verifiable 
through the current authentic descriptions of California, 

1 An interesting chapter could be made up of the theories, framed 
on the basis of the popular geology then current, which were discussed 
by miners in those days, in their efforts to understand the sources and 
disposition of the gold, theories in which "volcanoes" had a very 
large part. The Rev. Dr. Benton amused himself with a number of 
them in his very entertaining California Pilgrim (Sacramento. 1853), 
pp. 231, sqq. Others one finds in various communications to the early 
newspapers. Men spent much time and money in disproving them 
before becoming satisfied. 



234 CALIFORNIA. 

from which they are in fact derived. So that, in fine, 
the pamphlet is very persuasive and plausible, and is a 
type of the sort of thing that in those days led thou- 
sands of trusting and incapable young men to a miserable 
death in the wilderness, or in the degraded and demor- 
alized drinking and gambling camps of the wilder days. 
Men, whether capable or incapable, who read such 
things, were not in the mood for sober state-building, 
and would have to learn much ere they could attain that 
mood in the land whither they went. From that land 
many of them would indeed return, more or less de- 
feated, poor and broken-spirited ; many would die early 
deaths ; the survivors would for the most part stay in 
the new land as hard toilers and poor men ; a few only 
would reap great fortunes, and of these few only a part 
would ever again see the old home. The average net 
income per man throughout the whole mining commu- 
nity, even in the best days, was, in view of the high ex- 
penses of living, seldom more than equal to treble the 
wages of an unskilled day laborer at home, and was 
usually much less than that. The miners themselves 
were the least likely of all men in California to become 
wealthy. The high wages naturally meant, for the 
miners, seldom the inducement to save for their fam- 
ilies at home, but almost always the temptation to 
extravagance. Meanwhile, the unsteady life affected 
the whole community in lamentable ways. For such 
realities, then, the golden dreams were preparing the 
dreamers. 

VIII. THE WAYS TO THE NEW LAND. 

The new-comers reached California either by water 
or by the emigrant trail across the continent. In the 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 235 

former case they generally came either by Panama 
(often, later, by Nicaragua), and so by the new steamers 
that just before the gold discovery had begun to do 
mail service in the Pacific, or else around Cape Horn, 
and in that case by whatever good or wretched sailing 
vessel could be chartered for the purpose. Steamers 
and sailing vessels came for some time as overcrowded 
with passengers as the passengers' brains were over- 
crowded with illusions. 1 Especially amusing is the state 
of things at the moment when the first gold-hunters 
from the Atlantic coast had reached Panama, and were 
there waiting for the first steamer, the California, which 
was to carry them to the golden land. The California 
had left for the Pacific Ocean before the gold was heard 
of, in order to go around the Horn, and to begin the 
new mail service. She reached the South American 
ports just at the moment of the beginning of the gold 
excitement as felt there, and she made San Francisco 
February 28, 1849, after first stopping at Panama and 
then at Monterey. At Panama she had to take up all 
who could be crowded aboard. Yet, ere she reached 
Panama, the people there had already had time to live 
through much excitement and perplexity. The steamer 
Oregon, a little later, found yet larger crowds of these 
unhappy ones. The climate was fatal to some and un- 
healthy to many more, and every one was enraged to 
find such imperfect means of transportation ready on 
the Pacific side. Of the new life in California every- 
body present had also the wildest notions, and fretted at 

1 For the Cape Horn voyage and the illusions, well described, see 
Dr. Stillman's fine record, from contemporary letters, in his Seeking 
the Golden Fleece (San Francisco, 1877). Some few of the new- 
comers crossed Central Mexico, more used the Isthmus of Tehaun- 
tepec; but these were routes of minor importance. 



236 CALIFORNIA. 

each hour of delay. 1 But, meanwhile, the American 
spirit hunted for suitable expression. After the Cali- 
fornia had passed, a newspaper, the " Panama Star," 
was begun on the spot by the impatient watchers for fur- 
ther steamers. This paper was well filled with bitter 
complaints about the expenses of this weary life on the 
way, about the poor accommodations attainable at Pan- 
ama, and about the deceit practiced by the steamship 
companies that had brought the people here. 2 In the 
same " Star," meanwhile, Protestant church exercises 
are also announced, and accounts are given of a recent 
celebration of Washington's birthday with a becoming 
dinner, with speeches and with toasts. What the wan- 
derers ate at this dinner does not appear ; but as they 
say in the - ■ Star " that nearly all the preserved meats 
brought from New York have been spoiled, and as they 
seem in general a very hungry crew, one is disposed 
to imagine that on Washington's birthday they dined 
off bananas, and drank such brandy as Panama af- 
forded. 

Their American citizenship, at all events, these sor- 
rowing wanderers could not forget. When the Cali- 
fornia came, those who were already on the spot were 
shocked to find that she brought with her not less than 
seventy-five Peruvians as steerage passengers. For 
the Peruvians also had caught the gold fever. Now 
even a Peruvian, as is unhappily obvious, so far pre- 
sumes upon the fact that God made him as to take up 

1 Rev. Mr. Willey, in his excellent statement, B. MS., has vividly 
described the situation at Panama at this moment, and I am much in- 
debted to his account. 

2 The Panama Star of February 24, 1849, is the number that I 
have used, and that is now preserved in the Pioneer Library at San 
Francisco. 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 237 

room, a truth that one thousand American citizens, wait- 
ing for a chance to get on board a steamer that was 
made to hold at most, perhaps, one fourth as many men, 
deeply and with obvious justice resented. The reasons 
for their resentment were further enforced by the truly 
righteous reflection that these base South Americans 
were actually trying to go and steal gold in California, 
— gold which plainly belonged solely to Americans. 
What could be done ? General Persifer F. Smith, as it 
chanced, was waiting at Panama also, and was to go 
with his little escort on the California, to take command 
of our forces on the Pacific coast. He was heaven's 
messenger at this time to his perplexed countrymen. 
He could vindicate the eternal justice. To make him a 
better messenger of heaven just then, he had, as his 
letters to the government show, quite lost his head for 
the nonce, and was at the mercy of the prayers of his 
furious fellow-citizens. Accordingly he entered into 
their feelings entirely. He reflected that all the gold- 
miners in California were, and would for some time re- 
main, trespassers on public lands, and that it was his 
solemn duty, as military commander of the Department 
of the Pacific, to keep them all off. He also reflected 
that he could not keep them all off, as they were many, 
and his force would be small. He further reflected 
that if he could not keep them all off he might keep 
some of them off, for the benefit of the others, thus 
at once protecting the public lands, pleasing the favored 
trespassers, and keeping out the foreigners. For, as 
he concluded, these Peruvians, and men like them, 
would be somehow more genuine trespassers on the 
public lands than his countrymen would be. For of 
course trespassing is a thing of degrees, and is toler- 



238 CALIFORNIA. 

able if the trespasser is a good fellow. The foreigners, 
therefore, he determined to exclude, and so announced 
in a proclamation, whose sole immediate intent was 
to clear the steerage of the California of those insolent 
and space-consuming Peruvians. 1 But the latter re- 
fused to leave the ship, and Smith's worthless thunder 
afterwards died away before he had fairly settled to his 
work in California. All miners were alike trespassers, 
and all alike needed peace, and protection from the gov- 
ernment, which could not possibly have excluded them 
if it had desired. This the general soon recognized, 
and did his best thenceforth to secure good order. 

The proclamation, however, called forth an eloquent 
letter in the " Panama Star," from an American gold- 
seeker, — a letter far too good to be lost. This corre- 
spondent, chafing in his enforced idleness at Panama, 
calls upon his future American fellow-trespassers to pre- 
pare to help enforce Smith's proclamation against for- 
eigners whenever California shall be reached. It is 
plain to him that the matter is one of simple right. 
Not, of course, that he means ill by the foreign miners. 

" If foreigners come, let them till the soil and make 
roads, or do any other work that may suit them, and 

1 The proclamation is to be found in the Panama Star as cited. 
Rev. Mr. Willey gives the mentioned motive as the real one in his 
statement. P. F. Smith's letters to the War Department, Cal. Doc. of 
1850 (as cited), pp. 704, sqq., themselves further show sufficiently both 
the clouded state of his own judgment at the moment and the true 
motive for his proclamation, whose text is given here also, on p. 716. 
On p. 712, Smith announces his intention, March 15, now that he has 
actually reached California, to enforce his proclamation, but on p. 720 
he acknowledges that he can do nothing. General Riley's view, a 
short time later, in his capacity as governor of California, appears 
from p. 789, in a letter of August 30, 1819, where he shows a very 
sensible willingness to abandon all such foolish distinctions between 
trespassers. 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 239 

they may become prosperous ; but the gold-mines were 
preserved by nature for Americans only, who possess 
nob]e hearts, and are willing to share with their fellow- 
men more than any other race of men on earth, but still 
they do not wish to give all. I ask of them who have 
left their homes, their comforts, their wives and chil- 
dren, and other dear relatives, if they would be willing 
to share all the hopes with the millions that might be 
shipped from the four quarters of the globe. I will 
answer for them and say no. We will share our inter- 
est in the gold-mines with none but American citizens." 
All this unconsciously brutal mixture of greed with 
mock-justice would seem to us excellent fooling, if we did 
not remember that such ideas took form later in Califor- 
nia, in the Foreign Miners' Tax Law of 1850, and in the 
numberless indecencies, vexatious regulations, and atroci- 
ties, that marked our treatment of the foreigners in early 
mining days. The next chapter will teach us to give 
the words of such men as this correspondent a very 
serious meaning. 

This voyage by Panama had, during all the early 
years, until the isthmus railroad came, its peculiar dan- 
gers and excitements. The tedious passage up the 
Chagres River and across the low mountains, the lazily 
clever natives, with their endless thieving and cheating 
devices, the frequently long waiting at Panama, the 
terrible cholera, the equally terrible Panama fever, the 
weariness, the heat, the degenerate life of many of the 
watching travelers, and then the sickly passage on the 
crowded steamers northward, the fogs on the California 
coast, the untrustworthy charts that made everybody 
uncertain how near shipwreck one might at any moment 
be, and the final joy when the Golden Gate appeared, 



240 CALIFORNIA. 

and when one sailed through the long, narrow strait 
into the magnificent harbor, and anchored in front of 
the strange new city of tents, — all these things we may- 
read in numberless narratives of the early golden days, 
and may still hear from the lips of many pioneers. 1 
The Panama voyage, however, remains in its character 
largely a tale of adventure, although not indeed without 
some very educating experiences. More important still 
for the social education of thousands of new-comers was, 
however, the seemingly monotonous life of the long voy- 
age in crowded vessels around Cape Horn. For quar- 
rels with incompetent or dishonest sea-captains, and 
quarrels among the passengers themselves, were com- 
mon enough in this vast fleet of hastily chosen and often 
improperly manned and governed vessels. One thus 
learned tedious lessons of unavoidable tolerance and of 
self-government ; but one also grew somewhat indif- 
ferent to the forms and machinery of government as 
practiced on land, and became disposed to think a di- 
rect appeal to the communhVy the best form of popular 
administration. Furthermore, one saw much, in the 
various ports, of foreign peoples and customs. One 
reached California after long months of sailing, trained 
in independence, and with a comparatively wide experi- 
ence of men. Some of the new-comers around the Horn 
have since been among California's most significant citi- 
zens. 

On the plains journeyed, meanwhile, in the summer 
of 1849, and in a number of subsequent summers, vast 
crowds of weary emigrants, who faced disease, hunger, 

1 Bayard Taylor's El Dorado tells of the voyage in the earliest 
days. Other pioneer accounts are too numerous to be catalogued 
here. 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 241 

and Indians for the sake of the golden land. Their life 
also has been frequently described ; most fully and suc- 
cessfully, perhaps, in the contemporary record of Delano 
(Old Block), himself one of them, and a man of mark 
later in the pioneer community. 1 As my own parents 
were of this great company, I have taken a natural 
interest in following their fortunes, and have before me 
a manuscript, prepared by my mother for my use, 
wherein, as an introduction to her own reminiscences 
of early days in San Francisco and elsewhere in Cal- 
ifornia, she has narrated, from her diary of that time, 
the story of the long land journey. Her diary and 
recollections are not as full as Delano's, but contain 
many incidents very characteristic of the whole life. 
The route taken and the general sequence of events in 
the early part of the journey do not vary much in her 
account from the ordinary things narrated by all the 
emigrants of that year. There was the long ascent of 
the Rocky Mountains, with the cholera following the 
trains for a time, until the mountain air grew too pure 
and cool for it. A man died of cholera in my father's 
wagon. There were also the usual troubles in the trains 
on the way, among such emigrants as had started out in 
partnership, using a wagon in common, or providing, 
one a wagon, and another the oxen or mules. Such 
partnerships were unstable, and to dissolve them in the 
wilderness would usually mean danger or serious loss to 
one of the partners. In settling these and other dis- 
putes, much opportunity was given to the men of emi- 
grant trains for showing their power to preserve the 

1 A. Delano, Life on the Plains and at the Diggings, Auburn and 
Buffalo, 1854. The journey across the plains is given from the au- 
thor's diary. 

16 



242 CALIFORNIA. 

peace and to govern themselves. There was also the 
delight at length, for my mother as for everybody, of 
reaching the first waters that flowed towards the Pacific 
Ocean. And then there was the arrival at Salt Lake, 
the meeting with the still well-disposed Mormons, and 
the busy preparation for the final stage of the great 
undertaking. 

From Salt Lake westward my parents, with their 
one child, my eldest sister, then but two years old, trav- 
eled apart from any train, and with but three men as 
companions. Their only guide-book was now a MS. 
list of daily journeys and camping-places, prepared by 
a Mormon who had gone to California and back in 
1848. This guide-book was helpful as far as the Sink 
of the Humboldt, but confused and worthless beyond. 
The result was that, after escaping, in a fashion that 
seemed to them almost miraculous, an openly threat- 
ened attack of hostile Indians on the Humboldt River, 
— an attack that, in their weakness, they could not for 
a moment have resisted, — they came to the Sink, only 
to miss the last good camping-place there, and, by rea- 
son of their vaguely-written guide-book, to find them- 
selves lost on the Carson desert. They erelong became 
convinced that they had missed their way, and that 
they must wander back on their own trail towards the 
Sink. It was a terrible moment, of course, when they 
thus knew that their faces must be turned to the east. 
One was confused, almost stupefied, for a while by the 
situation. The same fatal horror of desolation and 
death that had assailed the Donner party in the Truckee 
pass seemed for a while about to destroy these emigrants 
also. They knew themselves to be among the last of 
the great procession. Many things had concurred to 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 243 

delay and to vex them. It was now already October, 
and there was not a moment to waste. To turn back 
at such a crisis seemed simply desperate. But the little 
water carried with them was now nearly exhausted, and 
their cattle were in hourly danger of falling down to die. 
Dazed and half senseless, the company clustered for a 
while about their wagon; but then a gleam of natural 
cheerfulness returned. " This will never do," they said, 
and set about the work of return. On the way they met 
by chance another lonesome little party of emigrants, 
who, with very scant supplies, were hurrying westward, 
in fear of the mountain snows. These could not help 
my father, save by giving him a few new directions for 
finding water and grass at the Sink, and for taking 
the right way across the desert. As the slow wagon 
neared the long-sought camping-place, my mother could 
not wait for the tired oxen, but remembers hurrying on 
alone in advance over the plain, carrying her child, who 
had now begun to beg for water. In her weariness, 
her brain was filled with nothing but one familiar Bible 
story, which she seemed to be dreaming to the very life 
in clear and cruel detail. But the end of all this came, 
and the party rested at the little pasture-ground near 
the Sink. 

These details I mention here, not for their personal 
interest, but because they are so characteristic of the 
life of thousands in the great summer of 1849. My 
mother's story goes on, however, to yet another charac- 
teristic experience of that autumn. Once supplied at 
the Sink, my parents, still as nearly alone as before, set 
out once again across the forty-mile desert, and, after 
more hardships and anxiety, reached the welcome banks 
of the Carson. But the mountains were now ahead, the 



244 CALIFORNIA. 

snows imminent, and the sand of the Carson Valley, un- 
der the wagon-wheels, was deep and heavy. On October 
12, however, they were opportunely met by two mounted 
men detailed from Captain Chandler's detachment of 
the military relief party which General Smith had sent 
out to meet and bring in the last of the emigration. The 
new-comers, riding at full speed, seemed to my mother, 
in her despair, like angels sent from heaven down by 
the steep, dark mountains that loomed up to the west- 
ward. They were, at all events, men of good moun- 
taineering experience and of excellent spirit, and they 
brought two extra mules, which were at once put at my 
mother's own service. By the peremptory orders of 
these relief men, the wagon was forthwith abandoned. 
What could be packed on the still serviceable animals 
was taken, and the rest of the journey was made by the 
whole party mounted. They arrived safely in the mines 
a little before the heavy snows began. 

General Smith's energy and humanity in sending out 
the relief, of whose work these two men were but a sin- 
gle detached instance, is worthy of all praise. Still more 
important than the relief on this Carson route was the 
detachment sent northward to meet the ill-starred emi- 
grants who had chosen the Peter Lassen trail, in the 
hope to escape the desert west of the Humboldt Sink by 
passing north of it. Their numbers were, at this last 
moment of the season, far greater, and their suffering 
more immediate and desperate. As the reports * show, 
Chandler and the others on the Truckee and Carson 
routes, relieved, indeed, many cases where the actual 
suffering was much greater than even the worst that my 

1 Official reports of the relief expedition one finds in Ex. Doc. 52, 
31st Congr., 1st Sess., p. 96, sqq. 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 245 

own parents underwent; yet this whole relief party 
dealt largely with straggling parties at the rear of a 
great column, while the Lassen route contained just then 
great numbers of people, who suffered fearfully and as 
a mass. Delano himself ably describes the situation on 
this northern route. 1 

Socially considered, the effect of the long journey 
across the plains was, of course, rather to discipline than 
to educate ; yet the independent life of the small trains, 
with their frequent need of asserting their skill in self- 
government, tended to develop both the best and the 
worst elements of the frontier political character ; namely, 
its facility in self-government, and its over-hastiness in 
using the more summary devices for preserving order. 
As for the effect on the individual character, the jour- 
ney over the plains was, at least as a discipline, very 
good for those who were of strong and cheerful enough 
disposition to recover from the inevitable despondency 
that must at first enter into the life of even the most 
saintly novice in camping. Where families were to- 
gether, this happy recovery happened, of course, more 
quickly. One learned, meanwhile, how to face deadly 
dangers day by day with patience and coolness, and to 
strongly religious minds the psychological effect of this 
solitary struggle with the deserts was almost magical. 
One seemed alone with God in the waste, and felt but 
the thinnest veil separating a divine presence from the 
souls that often seemed to have no conceivable human 
resource left. This experience often expresses itself in 
language at once very homely and very mystical. God's 

1 Op.cit., p. 234. Delano himself got in early. Both in this year 
and later, many emigrants also took a southern route from Salt Lake 
to Los Angeles, and yet others came via Santa Fe\ 



246 I '• •'•' OBJS • I 

presence, .i declares, u . bo longer ;« mattes <>i faith, 
i»ni <»i .in. x I light w ho el se was there bul God ><> the 

\>i>- if everj suggestion u .\ > .»i the familiar sacred sto 

i.. j <>>>.- lOttghl :« i. •«>»»!»(.. ;m,l l:ii oil -ol.l.-n l.in.l of 

i»i. mm.:..', and one was In the wilderness «>i thli world, 
often guided onU i>> i a from In aven, i>\ the stars 
and 1m the sunset The clear blue was almost perpetu 
nil, overhead} <i»' Dure mountain winds were about 
one . and again, even ««. the hot and parched desert > 
mysterious power provided thi Eevi preeioui springs ->n.i 
streams ol watei &.mid the jagged, broken, and bai 
i. -ii hills, amid the desolation d the lonelj plains, amid 
the h >n unknown but always horrible dangers <>t * 1 1 « - 
vi u . one met experiem gg ol pre< li - i\ the sort that else 
where we always find producing the most enthusiastic 
dorms .<i religious mysticism 4,nd so the trul^ pii 
among these struggling wanderer) gained bom the 
whole life one element more ol pellgleus fee idfai tin 
i.m iiw- ii... i.. ii. .i „ ., | yet to i erne, in eai i\ ( alifor 
mi. between everj conservative tendency ;n>.i the forces 
of dlsordei 

1\ PHB :-TUIHi.il ,1.- | OH 1 I <>N:-UTIUI.'\ 

ti»(> constitutional questions that the interregnum 
had begun so fiercely to agitate assumed :< nev form In 
the presence ol all these Incoming st] mgers San Fran 
eisco wa already In the summei ol 184$ a great town, 
m>u \.m> largely built «>i tents, and dail^ growii 
rii.< end of L849 was <<> ;-<*<> more than one hundred 
thousand people »<» the territory Everything must !><> 
Improvised, government Included. Meanwhile, anarchy 
.-. in.-.i to be threatening r-> Mn\. is pa General Riiej 



had succeeded Colonel Mason ivi t*nor, while <■• n 

nil Siinlli . .1111111. mil. <,l llw> l>.'|»:irini.Mi< ol (lx> Paciftl | 

i>ui .l.-.M i i.'.i . to the mines had rendered the military 

pOWC) alftlOSl wliolls lueffei in.' \ <<n | I foil u \\<\o 

.1. hi -nL-n, .1 .'.i ih.- |MV|r, ( An.i .i the Immigrants oi 
isi(. had ft< ■«« - 1\ objei I id to bhal fragmentary pseudo 
Mexican legal system oi Irresponsible alcaldes, "i»:ii 
would the nev earners ol the spring, summer, and fall 
of is \\) hold ol the bme \ stem tn an e> en move degi h 
. i (,■ i..u»i >\ ho should govern fchi si i i*owd Fhem 
■ . k . r.ni iii. mi the whole theory that ii" 1 I fnlted 
Statt government still held would have to i" 1 aban 
donedi Or should the United States military governoi 
i. <in.nn ... before al the head oi affairs llul his ><< 
thorltj m . n u . iii.-. i in question on tiev grounds, and 
with ver^ great plausibility, since the treaty ol peace 
,\. i.i .i ii<- had authority, where were bhe soldiers to be 
found "i suflli lent fori i bo maintain li ' The sod d 
condition, then, seemed to call urgently '<>> Immediate 
.i. tli 

i'',«i now; jus! ' ! <i ,,! oev social condition was estab 
turning Itself, bhe '• • ' ( <"- . bi an bo grov verj si " ,;i | thai 
iiu> political situation <>i the i ounti j r since the i" atj 
of peace, => « holfy oev one 4.nd hi <• bi glus one ©i 
the strangi i fc I" 1 ' led < <;< C illfoi ; <<« polltli al hi itoi ) 
\\ i.;.i was the actual legal status oi the territory oi Cailfoi 
,,, ,. .,n. . n».- I*. ( i\ oi i h ai • • ( Songn s as w y I uov . 
n.\ .. passed anj I tv\ for fche foi matlon oi a * Sallfoi nl i 
territorial government, and so the anomalous condition, 

whatevei ll was, continued to eitlsi down to the tin I 

the admission oi the Stati oi California Into the Union 
Nov two great ;»"<' conflicting theories ol bhe status oi 
< laUfornla were commonly hi Ld ai that time Thi n 



248 CALIFORNIA. 

two came into open opposition in the beginning of 18-49. 
The one was the settlers' theory, which with full con- 
fidence regarded California as in a condition analogous 
to that of the territory of Oregon. This theory was 
the same in purport as the previous settlers' theory that 
had been maintained in the ■• Star " of 1847, but it was 
now urged on much more plausible grounds. The 
trean* of peace, it was said, had deprived the military 
governor of his legal powers. He was merely an 
usurper. California was a part of United States ter- 
ritory. In the absence of congressional action, the peo- 
ple had a right to meet and to legislate at their pleasure. 
This right they derived from the nature of man, and 
from the Constitution oi the United States. The former 
has guarantied to man the right to govern himself ac- 
cording to the principles of justice. The latter, the 
Constitution of the United States, as was asserted, guar- 
antied to the inhabitants of America a republican, and 
not a military, government, at least in time of peace. 
Had Congress furnished to the people a territorial gov- 
ernment, the people would be bound to accept the same. 
But in the absence of such action, the popular will, put- 
ting itself under the sole restraint of the Constitution, 
must reign supreme. This theory, as we see. was not 
without its vagueness. Exactly how the Constitution of 
the United States could be interpreted as including this 
form of the doctrine of popular sovereignty is not clear 
to me. nor was it made clear in the discussions of that 
period. The Constitution had never contemplated ex- 
actly the case of this conquered California. The very 
appeal to the law of nature showed a certain lack of 
clearness in the settler's mind about the state of the law 
in the statute-books. Yet the settler's instinct was a 



/..: CQNQUJ-ar COMF1 1 PJM), 249 

Bound one, however imperfect his theory* The time was 
in fact nearly ripe for an expression of the popular will. 
The settlers of L846 and L846 had changed their rest* 
Lessness for conservatism in the presenoe of the new- 
comers. The treaty of peaoe had taken the Land ques- 
tion out of the power of Local legislatures] and an addi- 
tional residence of two years in the country had made 
the Immigrants of L846, the land-hungry men of L847j 
comparatively sedate old inhabitants. They felt them* 
selves in :i sense tho true Californians. They regarded 
the forty -niners vi i 1 1 1 a oertain conservative dread. They 
had in very many oases come to own Land themselves, 
by purchase from the claimants under Mexican grants* 
They were now in mosl oases, when oompared with the 
forty niners, no Longer revolutionary agitators, but sober 
American advooates of the older order of things, and 
opponents of the spoliation that they had before threat- 
ened. Therefore the squatter legislature of the Hast- 
ings plan was already a Less imminent danger, although 
Americans had by no means Binoerely determined as yet 
to recognise the just olaims of all native Californians* 
Meanwhile, it the danger of violent and wholly one-sided 
legislation Mas already Less, the danger of violent and 
wholly oonfused popular movements in default of Legis- 
lation grew daily greater* Ami no wax seemed open, 
even in the autumn of l SIS, much more Ln the spring 
and summer of L849, save to oall upon the American 
political instinct to express itself in tho form oi an or- 
ganised government. 

l>ut the ohief Opposing view o( California's Legal status 

has to be mentioned. That is the view maintained by 
Mason and then by General Riley, the last territorial 
governor of California* Riley's view was of course in 



250 CALIFORNIA, 

accord with his instructions. It Is well-known, ami shall 

bo stai i'il in Kiloy's OWB words ! — 

44 The laws oi California, not inconsistent with tin* 
laws, constitution, ami treaties <>t' the United States, arc 

still in force, and must continue in force till changed by 

competent authority. Whatever may be thought of the 
right of the people u> temporarily replace the officers of 

tln^ existing government 1 y others appointed by a pro- 
Visional territorial legislature, there ean be no question 

that the existing laws of the country must continue in 
force till replaced by others made ami enacted by com- 
petent power* That power, by the treaty of peace, as 

well as from the nature o( the ease, is Tested in Con- 
gress. 'The Situation of California in this respect is very 

different from that of Oregon. The Latter was without 
laws, while the former has a system of laws, which, 
though somewhat defective, ami requiring many changes 
ami amendments, must continue in force till repealed by 

competent legislative power. The situation o{ California 
is almost identical with that o( Louisiana, anil the decis- 
ions oi the Supreme Court in recognising the validity of 

the laws which existed in that country previous to its 

annexation to the United States, were not inconsistent 

with the Constitution and laws o( the United States, or 
repealed by legitimate legislative enactments, furnish us 
a deal and Safe guide in our present situation. It is 
important that citizens Should understand this fact, so as 

not to endanger their property ami involve themselves in 
useless and expensive litigation, by giving countenance 

to persons Claiming authority which is not given them 

by law. and by putting faith in laws which can never be 

reoognited by Legitimate courts." 

That is, as one sees, according to Kilov's view. Stock- 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED, 'JM 

ton's proclamation concerning the a former laws and 
usages" remained as valid ;« statement of the situation 
of California after the treaty of peace :is it had been be- 
fore ilu> treaty of peace. In consequence tin 1 chief mil- 
itary offioer present is still governor of the territory, only 

now he is civil, and not military, governor. 1 

That Riley's view, although probably Legally the cor- 
rect view, was not. indubitable, even from the point of 
view of the government itself, appears from two curious 
facts. The first is that the government, while it thus 

instructed Riley as to his Legal position, held and ex- 
pressed another and an opposing view of the nature of 

his powers. The second is that, Riley himself, when the 
constitutional convention had Once finished its work, 
simply abandoned his position, by giving Up tO the au- 
thorities that the people elected this power and responsi- 
bility which iu» had affirmed i^> he Legally his own. For 
nothing is dearer than thai an officer Legally responsi- 
ble for the government of a territory cannot, consistently 

abandon his post, unless an equally Legal authority i* 
ready tO succeed him. 

As to the first point, the alternative theory which the 

i Riley's view is well summed up in Burnett's Rttninisotncts of <#h 
Old Pioneer ^Now York, 1880), p. 829. Burnett's account of this 
whole controversy is one of the best extant, outside of the official rec- 
ord ms preserved in theCal. Docs, of 1850, and apart from the ron).'m 
porary numbers of the Alta California. Burnett himself represented 
the senior's \ iew. Riley's own statement of tin- case, ms quoted above, 
is to be found in the Cal. Poos, of I860 (as cited), p. 777. A dear 
statement of the settler's view is further to be found in the speech of 
C. T. Botts, in (ho Debates of the Constitutional Convention of Cali- 
foru'ht, p. ii. As to tin- technical merits of the case, ably disputed 
as it was, l have no authority of my own to decide, but l am mi! 
vised by good authority that Riley's position, in so far ms he con* 
sistently hold to it, was no doubt legally sounder than the opposing 
views. 



252 CALIFORNIA. 

administration held appears in two documents. One is 
the president's message to Congress, in December, 1848, 
which declares that " upon the exchange of ratifications 
of the treaty of peaee with Mexico on the 30th of 
May last, the temporary governments which had been 
established over New Mexico and California by our mil- 
itary and naval commanders, by virtue of the rights of 
war, ceased to derive any obligatory force from that 
source of authority ; and having been ceded to the 
United States, all government and control over them 
under the authority of Mexico had ceased to exist. Im- 
pressed with the necessity of establishing territorial 
governments over them, I recommended the subject to 
the favorable consideration of Congress in my message 
communicating the ratification of peace, on the 6th of 
July last, and invoked their action at that session. 
Congress adjourned without making any provision for 
their government. The inhabitants, by the transfer of 
their country, had become entitled to the benefits of our 
laws and constitution, and yet were left without any 
regularly organized government. Since that time, the 
very limited power possessed by the executive has been 
exercised to preserve and protect them from the inevi- 
table consequences of a state of anarchy. The only 
government which remained was that established by 
the military authority during the war. Regarding this 
to be a de facto government, and that by the presumed 
consent of the inhabitants it might be continued tempo- 
rarily, they were advised to conform and submit to it 
for the short intervening period before Congress would 
again assemble and could legislate on the subject. The 
views entertained by the executive on this point are 
contained in a communication of the secretary of state, 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 253 

dated the 7tli of October last, which was forwarded 
for publication to California and New Mexico, a copy 
of which is herewith transmitted." The letter of Buch- 
anan, secretary of state, to which reference is made in 
these last words, expresses this view as follows : — 

" In the mean time, the condition of the people of 
California is anomalous, and will require on their part 
the exercise of great prudence and discretion. By the 
conclusion of the treaty of peace, the military govern- 
ment which was established over them under the laws 
of war, as recognized by the practice of civilized nations, 
has ceased to derive its authority from this source of 
power. But is there, for this reason, no government in 
California? Are life, liberty, and property under the 
protection of no existing authorities ? This would be a 
singular phenomenon in the face of the world, and espe- 
cially among American citizens, distinguished as they are 
above all other people for their law-abiding character. 
Fortunately they are not reduced to this sad condition. 
The termination of the war left an existing government 
— a government de facto — in full operation ; and this 
will continue, with the presumed consent of the people, 
until Congress shall provide for them a territorial gov- 
ernment. The great law of necessity justifies this con- 
clusion. The consent of the people is irresistibly in- 
ferred from the fact that no civilized community could 
possibly desire to abrogate an existing government, when 
the alternative presented would be to place themselves in 
a state of anarchy, beyond the protection of all laws, 
and reduce them to the unhappy necessity of submitting 
to the dominion of the strongest." 

As to the second point, if Riley's theory, held in ac- 
cordance with his instructions, was the correct one, then 



254 CALIFORNIA. 

the people of California not only were unable to form a 
popular government without his consent, but had no 
right, even with his consent, to begin their own state 
government before Congress should have admitted the 
State. Governor Riley, as chief executive, could indeed 
call a convention, but, from his own point of view, he 
could not authorize the actual formation of a sovereign 
state, nor properly recognize it in advance of a congres- 
sional recognition. Yet just this he did, surrendering 
his powers to the new state government months before 
the admission of the State. There was then simply no 
consistently held theory concerning the legal status of 
California at this critical moment. 

Yet the problem involved was, in the spring and sum- 
mer of 1849, no mere question of theory, but an intensely 
practical one, that threatened quickly to become very 
serious indeed. Here were the people, with the Oregon 
tradition in their minds, anxious for self-government, 
and loudly asserting a right of which they could give no 
very definite theoretical or legal account. Here was 
Riley, with one form of the administration doctrine in 
his mouth, hopefully transcribing, translating, and pub- 
lishing the supposed "laws in force." Here was the 
president, ordering through the secretary of war that 
Riley should take this plan of explaining the law to the 
people of California, and himself meanwhile making 
through the secretary of state a wholly different and 
inconsistent explanation of General Riley's powers, an 
explanation whereby the government of California is 
denied to be a discoverable actuality, is treated as a 
mere presumption, and is based upon the notion that 
California, being between the devil and the deep sea, 
must get out by the one road that Providence has kindly 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 255 

opened ; namely, the military government. Thus the 
settler talks of the law of nature, General Riley of Mex- 
ican law, Secretary Buchanan of the " presumed con- 
sent," whatever that may be ; and meanwhile Califor- 
nia society is looking the devils of anarchy in the face, 
and is bravely trying to help itself. It was in those 
days that James King of William, as he later wrote in 
the " Bulletin," heard people at Sutter's Fort talking 
over the situation, and speculative wanderers discussing 
in leisure moments before the camp-fires whether mur- 
der could fairly be called a crime any more in Califor- 
nia, since there was now no law. 

We have had in the foregoing to speak of the Amer- 
ican settler's bigotry in the presence of un-American 
institutions, and of his injustice to the conquered popu- 
lation. When on the contrary one turns to his political 
skili 5 as it showed itself in this crisis, one has, as we are 
all aware, nothing but praise. In fact, the instinctive 
political skill shown throughout this early history is the 
one thing in early California affairs of which we can 
certainly feel quite justly proud. Nearly all else in the 
early history of California after the country was in 
American hands is more or less under a doud, save, in- 
deed, so much as fortune chose to make romantic and 
charming. We shall see, hereafter, how little the politi- 
cal skill itself was able to cope with the moral dangers 
of the early days, and how only after years of toil, men 
learned to supplement their instinctive cleverness in 
state-making with the necessary devotion to the more 
commonplace duties of citizenship. But viewed simply 
as cleverness, this quality, as it now shows itself, is 
wholly admirable. 

The summer of 1849 was full of abortive lesser at- 



256 CALIFORNIA. 

tempts at planning the ways and means of self-govern- 
ment ; most of these attempts seem not to have got 
beyond the limits of private conversation. Some people 
freely talked about the Bear Flag and a Pacific repub- 
lic. Others insisted that perfect loyalty to the govern- 
ment at Washington was consistent with the firmest 
determination to resist all unconstitutional military 
government here. Riley repeated, in every possible 
official way, that his government was not military, but 
civil and legal, a necessary continuation in the present 
of the old Mexican form of administration. Congress, 
meanwhile, was of no service, and adjourned in 1849, 
as it had adjourned the year before, without having 
done more for this new land than to extend customs 
regulations over California, and to establish a few post- 
offices and mail-routes. Why Congress thus hesitated 
is a matter of well-known national history. The inter- 
ests of California had to be postponed, while Congress 
wrangled over the position of slavery in the new ter- 
ritories. Had the Southern party more promptly under- 
taken to compromise matters, it might have been able to 
gain more for itself. The long delay ended in the total 
and inevitable loss of California to the slave-power. 

As we shall hereafter see, all this political confusion 
was at the moment consistent with the prevalence of 
temporary good order. The summer of 1849 was a 
cheerful and a socially peaceful one throughout the 
mining and commercial region. The southern part of 
the territory, where the native Californians lived, was 
indeed already showing signs of the general demorali- 
zation that we were in time to inflict upon it. Its trade, 
such as there had been, languished, its people were un- 
welcome in the mines, and unhappy at home. They 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 257 

had also a natural and well-founded dread as to the 
future of their property, and were suspicious of us, as 
well as sometimes actively hostile. But elsewhere the 
life was busy and hopeful, although carelessness, dissi- 
pation, and absurdly great expectations were preparing 
the way for a possible future anarchy. The state or- 
ganization was needed none the less in view of this 
present temporary social prosperity of the country. 
For there were dark days ahead. 

As for more organized efforts at self-government : 
such were the abortive legislative assembly of San Fran- 
cisco, and similar attempts in Sonoma and in Sacra- 
mento. 1 Such were also the meetings associated with 
these efforts, wherein delegates were elected to meet in 
a constitutional convention at San Jose, without any 
authority from Governor Riley. But all such attempts 
were not only failures in themselves, but were super- 
seded by Riley's own proclamation, issued June 3, 
1849, 2 announcing, in accordance with his instructions, 
that as Congress had adjourned without providing " a 
new government for this country to replace that which 
existed on the annexation of California to the United 
States," it had become "our imperative duty to take 
some active means to provide for the existing wants of 
the country ; " and calling upon the people to elect a 
convention to form a state constitution. In the mean- 

1 See the Alta for March 1, 1849, for reports from Sacramento and 
Sonoma of meetings to organize district governments. For the San 
Francisco meetings and undertakings, see the Annals, pp. 208, 218, 
220, and pp. 221, sqq. For the general situation and an account of 
these movements, see also Burnett (loc. cit.). Tuthill, in chap. xx. of 
his History, gives a somewhat detailed account of the matter as dis- 
cussed in Congress. See also Cal. Docs. pp. 773, sq. 

2 Cal. Docs. pp. 776, sqq. 

17 



258 CALIFORNIA. 

while Riley ordered elections under the " former usages " 
of judges of superior jurisdiction, and of other neces- 
sary officers, to hold office until the state government 
should be completed and ready for its work. And he 
caused to be published what he regarded as the Mexican 
laws of the territory still in force. 1 

With hesitation, and after much murmuring the peo- 
ple accepted Riley's call, waived their theoretical objec- 
tion that he, as usurper, had no right to make the call, 
and elected their delegates to the convention. And 
thus the vexed question as to the legal rights of the 
people of California was solved by a very illogical and 
yet very sensible compromise, which was made accord- 
ing to no theoretical principle whatsoever. The popu- 
lar sovereignty sentiment of the Oregon tradition be- 
came untrue to itself, and its upholders illogically sub- 
mitted to General Riley's authority so far as to go into 
the convention that he called and authorized, and to 
vote under such conditions as he ' ordained. General 
Riley, for his part, very illogically sacrificed the claim 
that he was the legal ruler of California, and that he 
was subject only to the administration and to congres- 
sional legislation, by calling a convention of the people, 
and by resigning his powers so soon as the people had 

1 As to the details of this action, Riley was guided by the advice of 
his secretary of state, the able and laborious Captain (in later years 
General) H. W. Halleck. Halleck's labors in preparing the way for 
the convention, and in the convention itself, have been well recog- 
nized and set forth by Rev. Mr. Willey, in his interesting article in 
the Overland Monthly for July, 1872, entitled " Recollections of Gen- 
eral Halleck." 

For the laws published by Riley, and for the official summary of the 
whole affair, as presented to Congress by the senators and represen- 
tatives of California when the} 7 first went to Washington, see the 
volume of the Debates of the Convention, Appendix. 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 259 

elected their own officers, and long before the admission 
of the State by Congress. As for Buchanan's beautiful 
little theory about the " presumed consent " of the people 
of California as the source of Riley's authority, that theory 
was soon utterly forgotten. And so here in California 
was repeated that ancient proceeding of compromise in 
place of adherence to abstract principle which has been 
all along so characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon in his polit- 
ical life. When one sees how the ponderous machinery 
of the constitution was soon afterwards in order and 
lightly running, notwithstanding all this wearisome pre- 
liminary wrangling among the master-workmen about 
plans and doctrines, one is strongly reminded of a cer- 
tain grandly simple expression of the spirit of English, 
and in fact of all Anglo-Saxon constitutional history, an 
expression contained in the most profound and familiar 
of nursery tales ; namely, in the one in which there is first 
a seemingly hopeless difference of opinion among the 
characters about certain great questions of principle, so 
that a time of tragic uncertainty follows, until of a sud- 
den, a compromise being happily suggested, the mouse 
begins to gnaw the rope, the rope to hang the butcher, 
and so all else to go well. This tale is a figure of the 
workings of Anglo-Saxon government. 

X. THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION AND ITS OUTCOME. 

So the convention assembled at Monterey, finding no 
quorum September 1, 1849, but beginning its organiza- 
tion September 3. This first business was rather slowly 
accomplished, three days being consumed in purely pre- 
liminary work, and yet more time being lost subsequently 
in subsidiary matters, before very much was accomplished. 
The convention had of course great difficulties concern- 



260 



CALIFORNIA. 



ing printing and engrossment. Other physical difficul- 
ties are hardly worth dwelling on here. The members 
of the convention nearly all brought with them their 
blankets to Monterey ; like the foxes and the birds, 
they had to look for holes and nests, and like the foxes 
and birds, they finally found where to bestow themselves. 
They speak highly of the hospitality of the little town. 
Larkin invited one member to lunch and one to dinner 
every day, and it is to be presumed that at least that 
member got in each case a good meal. The rest ex- 
hibited no small patience, on the whole, although occa- 
sionally the records of the votes show many absentees. 







RESIDENCE. 


OCCUPATION. 


AGE. 















































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NATIVITY. 




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New England 


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Kentucky 






3 


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f 


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Virginia 






3 


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Maryland 






5 


2 


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Florida . 






1 


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Tennessee 






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ifornia 






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Totals . . . 


35 


13 


4 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 261 

Bayard Taylor in his "El Dorado " describes the whole 
body with great interest and delight. Their own table 
of ages, etc., is the basis upon which I have constructed 
the above statistical analysis of the social and political 
character of the convention, which I give in a form quite 
different from theirs (cf. " Debates," p. 478). 

To understand the work of the convention, one must 
remember the conflicting forces present, as indicated by 
tliis table, and by the debates. A strong centre (if one 
may transfer to the body a foreign phrase) was made 
up of the Americans of the interregnum. They had 
various personal peculiarities, and occasionally aired 
their private views at excessive length ; nor were they 
men of any great likeness of training. But they had in 
common a lively interest in a permanent and strong 
government in California ; they all had a concern in 
California, that was prior in origin to the gold discovery, 
and that seemed apt to outlast any immediate good for- 
tunes or reverses that might come to them in conse- 
quence of this discovery. They were fearful of the 
new-coming population, in case it were not soon re- 
strained by fixed laws. And they were indisposed to 
permit the sectional interests of older States to interfere 
with the present destiny of California. What one may 
call an extreme right was meanwhile composed of the 
old Californians, among whom must be included some 
of the older foreign residents. These men came to the 
convention as strict conservatives, loving the old order 
of things, wholly opposed to the formation of any state 
government, preferring a territorial organization, and 
anxious for a political separation of their own section 
from the northern half of the territory. When they 
discovered their original plans to be impracticable, they 



262 CALIFORNIA. 

were for the time at sea, until they found a new and 
unexpected, although somewhat covert and certainly 
very insincere ally. 

This was in the extreme left, as, keeping up the form 
already used, we may call the small but very ably led 
section of extreme Southerners. These men, of whom 
B. F. Moore of Florida was the one most unpleasantly 
noticeable, and among whom Jones of Louisiana (by 
birth a Kentuckian) was also noteworthy, were led by 
the most interesting politician in the convention, the 
since famous, and recently deceased, W. M. Gwin. 
Their undoubted object was, not so much to give over 
any part of California at once to slavery, since this 
hurrying life of the gold-seekers wholly forbade any 
present consideration of such a plan , but to prepare -the 
way for a future overthrow of the now paramount 
Northern influence in the territory, and so to make pos- 
sible an ultimate division of the State, in case the south- 
ern part should prove to be adapted to slave life. 

The very existence of this plan has been frequently 
denied ; but one who reads the debates can have little 
doubt of it. The interest of the discussions lies largely 
in the marvelous skill with which Gwin, although un- 
able to carry his point, still in minor matters directed 
the course of the proceedings, and gradually gathered 
about himself such a following that, although he was 
baffled in his immediate objects, he at all events made 
himself a power in the convention, and assured for him- 
self a prominent position in the future political life of 
the State. No other man in the convention approaches 
him in impressiveness and in skill, as shown in these de- 
bates. A monograph on the convention long enough to 
give the time for unraveling the intricate skein of the 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 263 

debates would read in large part like a chapter from 
the political biography of one who intellectually was the 
most admirable of all the unprincipled political in- 
triguers in the history of California. 

Of Gwin himself much has been written, although 
not with reference to his work in the convention. Mr. 
O'Meara's generally admirable monograph on " Brod- 
erick and Gwin " (San Francisco, 1881) has discussed 
the later political life of the great schemer during the 
period of his struggle with his picturesque, heroic, and 
almost equally unprincipled foe, that remarkable repre- 
sentative of the Irish- American political character, Da- 
vid Broderick. The civil war proved to be G-win's polit- 
ical grave. His public life in the South and in Mexico 
was thenceforth a failure, and his recent death has closed 
a long period of inactivity. Gwin had before 1849 
already been in the House of Representatives at Wash- 
ington. In California he appeared in 1849, just in time 
to take part in the trial of the " Hounds " in San Fran- 
cisco. 1 This event brought him into public notice. 
He had come to the territory with the avowed deter- 
mination to be a senator from the new State. He was 
glad, therefore, to find himself a man of mark forthwith, 
and took advantage of the fact to get himself at once 
elected to the convention. To Monterey he went, 
armed with copies of a printed constitution ; namely, 
that of the State of Iowa, in which he intended to make 
some amendments, but which he plainly regarded as an 
instrument that would give him especial authority in the 
convention. For this body, as he knew, would be with- 
out printing-press. 2 He also intended, as the survivors 

1 Of the "Hounds " we shall hear a little hereafter, in another con- 
nection. 

2 See his own account, Debates, p. 24. Also Mr. E. O. Crosby's 



264 CALIFORNIA. 

of the convention say, to get himself elected president 
of the convention. But the men of the interregnum 
chose Semple instead, whose eloquence was thereby a 
trifle checked. 1 Gwin was undaunted. In the " Com- 
mittee on the plan of a constitution," he took a prominent 
part, and, in the early debates, was already noteworthy, 
always seeming conciliatory, thoughtful, learned, and 
reasonable. He above all avoided directly broaching 
sectional topics, or matters that could arouse jealousy 
between classes of the people. When McCarver, who 
represented the Oregon tradition, with its hatred of a free 
negro population, proposed in committee of the whole to 
supplement the clause forbidding negro slavery in Cal- 
ifornia (a clause which had already been unanimously 
adopted in committee without debate) by another clause 
excluding from the state free negroes, Gwin let the men 
of the interregnum talk this matter over at their leisure, 
but himself said nothing. The clause of McCarver 
passed in committee, but only to be overthrown later in 
the house, and by a vote that, so far as it was not com- 
posed of the men of the interregnum, would seem to 
have been organized almost altogether outside of the 
proceedings of the convention, and that remained to the 
end comparatively silent on this matter. Gwin was in 
this silent majority. 

But the true purposes of the master began to appear 
when the great topic of the boundary of the future State 

statement, B. MS., a most valuable sketch of the convention by a 
surviving member. 

1 Debates, p. 18. As Semple took the chair, he made a "few re- 
marks," saying among other things : " The eyes of all Europe are 
now directed toward California." With this proud consciousness he 
sat down, and no doubt looked every inch a president. He made in 
fact a very good one. 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 265 

came up. Here was a chance for him both to join to- 
gether the two extreme wings of the convention, by con- 
ciliating the Californians, who, so far, had suspected him, 
and to prevent the Northern party from acquiring too 
great a control on the coast. Wholly fatal to the plans 
of Gwin's party it would have been either to attempt to 
introduce slavery into the constitution directly, or to 
have proposed an immediate division of the southern 
territory from the northern half. The new-comers, 
even in case they were themselves violent Southerners, 
had, in general, no desire to see slavery introduced for 
the present into the unsettled gold-mining community. 
And the men of the interregnum were altogether op- 
posed to any thought of a division of the inhabited ter- 
ritory, in whose conquest they had taken part. Any 
effort, under these circumstances, to affect the course of 
events by direct means would have been fatal to Gwin's 
political aspirations, as well as to the cause that he no 
doubt had at heart. One thing, however, remained. 
The Northern party might be prevented from carrying 
out the very natural plan of limiting the boundaries 
of the State to the inhabited portions of the territory 
and to the Sierra region. The vast unknown country 
beyond, extending to the Rocky Mountains, — this the 
men of the interregnum were inclined to cut off once 
for all, although in theory it belonged to California. If 
they succeeded in this purpose, however, then a compact 
State would be formed, having a certain geographical 
unity, and perhaps resisting further efforts to divide 
it. It would have the whole frontage on the ocean, it 
would be a free State, and it would be a strong State, 
rendering the unknown territory eastward almost cer- 
tainly worthless to the Southern party in the future. 



266 CALIFORNIA. 

Might not all this be prevented ? Might not one insist 
for the moment upon keeping the territorial boundaries 
of California intact ? Might not one thus insist on go- 
ing to Congress with a State covering this whole vast 
region (wherein are now Nevada and Utah and a large 
part of Arizona) ? Might not one consequently secure 
under any circumstances an important advantage to the 
Southern party ? For, first, if, as was possible, Con- 
gress should refuse to admit the whole of this great 
State, and should determine to divide it into a northern 
and a southern half, the desired result would forthwith 
be secured. But one need not rely upon that. 1 Far 
more important for the interests of the Southern party 
would be the certainty that this great State, if it was 
once admitted, would, in time, fall to pieces ; and the 
equally manifest certainty that, in this falling to pieces, 
a division of the State that would cut part of it off from 
the ocean would be sure to be deemed unjust. For, in 
view of these considerations, such a division of the over- 
grown State would take place as would give the South- 
ern party their fair chance to introduce slavery into the 
southern half of California, in case such introduction 
should ever be found profitable. 2 

1 And Gwin did not rely upon it, as he actually accepted Halleck's 
proviso, which proposed to permit the state legislature to accept from 
Congress a limitation of boundary on the east, but declined to em- 
power the legislature to accept a division into northern and southern 
halves. Yet Gwin must have known that to carry to Congress a very 
large State might very easily lead to an ultimate division of the same, 
before admission, into a northern and southern half. For if Congress 
refused to admit the State until such division were made, the people 
would be apt, in the end, to submit; and the bigger the territory in- 
cluded, the more probable would be such a refusal. 

2 For remarks of Gwin, showing that he had this plan in mind, see 
Debates, p. 169. "If we include boundary enough for several States, 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 267 

The native Californian members, however, were evi- 
dently approachable upon this matter. As people in- 
terested in the old order of things, they were glad to 
vote for the whole of old California as a State, so long 
as their own much desired separation of their section 
from the rest could not be carried out. So they will- 
ingly joined in rejecting any new limitation of the old 
boundary to the eastward. Moreover, they could easily 
be brought to understand their own advantage. This 
present lavish offer of the one great State to the Union 
meant, as they well knew, a good chance of more future 
freedom to themselves, through the division of the State, 
and the formation of a little State or Territory for their 
own benefit. Gwin and Jones very cleverly appeased 
them further by together introducing a taxation article 
that was supposed to promise to work in their inter- 
it is competent for the people and the State of California to divide it 
hereafter." And, p. 196: "I have not the remotest idea that the 
Congress of the United States would give us this great extent of 
boundary if it was expected that it should remain one State. And 
when gentlemen say that they never will give up one inch of the Pa- 
cific coast, they say what they cannot carry out. So far as I am con- 
cerned, I should like to see six States fronting on the Pacific in Cali- 
fornia. I want the additional power in the Congress of the United 
States of twelve senators instead of four ; for it is notorious, sir, that 
the State of Delaware, smaller than our smallest district, has as much 
power in the Senate as the great State of New York. It is not the 
passage of a bill through the House of Representatives that makes a 
law ; that bill has to go through the Senate, and in that body the 
State of Delaware has as much power as the State of New York. And 
the past history of our country, sir, develops the fact that we will 
have State upon State here, — probably as many as on the Atlantic 
side, — and as we accumulate States we accumulate strength; our in- 
stitutions become more powerful to do good and not to do evil. I have 
no doubt the time will come when we will have twenty States this 
side of the Rocky Mountains. I want the power, sir, and the popu- 
lation. When the population comes, they will require that this State 
shall be divided." 



268 CALIFORNIA. 

est. The Californians were thus captured, and readily- 
voted for Gwin's proposition. How much Gvvin really 
loved them, the Land Act of 1851, and Gwin's infa- 
mous supplementary Land Bill of 1852 will sufficiently 
show us. 

Oddly enough, however, the Gwin plan received some 
cooperation in the convention from the least expected 
quarter, namely, from Riley's secretary, Halleck, and 
from the other administration agents in California, 
whose influence in the convention was decided, although 
their votes were few. Their purpose, indeed, was not 
Gwin's ; and it was a very odd one. Thomas Butler 
King, a direct representative of the administration, who 
had come to California on a tour of observation, to make 
a report on the condition and resources of California, a 
re£>ort which was later printed, and who, meanwhile, 
expressed in private the president's views on topics con- 
nected with the convention, had said to some of the 
members, — to Semple among the rest, — " For God's 
sake, leave us no territory to legislate upon in Con- 
gress ! " That is, as he meant to be understood, ''re- 
lieve us from the need of further discussion about slavery 
in the territories by presenting to us a complete Califor- 
nia, ready for admission, extending to the Rocky Moun- 
tains, and excluding from its boundaries slavery." The 
ostrich-like innocence of this plan of the Whig admin- 
istration of Taylor — which had sent out poor Butler 
King to wander about in a land that he never under- 
stood, and to express views that never helped anybody 
— is plain enough. But votes were votes, and Gwin 
rejoiced in an alliance with Halleck, — an alliance that, 
once for all, seemed to prove to the Northern public in 
California, whose votes, also, Gwin, as senatorial candi- 



THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 269 

date, might one day need, that Gwin himself had never 
intrigued on behalf of slavery. For here was a Whig 
administration, in its imbecility, instructing its agents to 
do just what Gwin himself had planned. 

The plan, then, seemed sure to succeed, and twice it 
secured a majority of votes, after long debate, — once in 
committee, once in the house. But it failed at last, 
through the praiseworthy firmness of the men of the in- 
terregnum, who, driven to the wall, finally made clear 
that they were ready to break up the convention rather 
than to submit to what they regarded as a permanently 
mischievous act. C. T. Botts, himself a Virginian, but 
always, in this convention, disposed to go with the typi- 
cal men of the interregnum (men such as Hastings, 
Semple, Brown. jlcCarver, 1 McDougal, Price, Snyder, 
and the rest), was a leader in this firm opposition. The 
result was, that a spirit of compromise was once more 
developed, and Gwin's plan had to be given up in favor 
of the present boundary of California. But the effort, 
although it failed, was an important one. It first 
showed Gwin's skill. He had brought over to his side 
the Californian representatives, who had at the outset 
suspected him, and whom he himself so little loved that 
he was quite capable, as events showed, of undertaking 
to despoil them, in legal fashion, of their lands. 

The boundary question sufficiently showed the char- 
acter of the forces at work in the convention. Never- 
theless the body was, notwithstanding its inner hostili- 
ties, a comparatively able and patriotic group of men, 
and in questions not directly involving sectional prob- 

1 McCarver, an Oregon man, belongs in the list, although he had 
been in California but a year. For the scene in convention at the 
crisis of the struggle, see Debates, p. 440. 



270 CALIFORNIA. 

lems it devoted itself with earnestness to its great task. 
Cruder political notions appeared but little in its delib- 
erations, and when they appeared, instinct quietly ig- 
nored what spoken argument would often have found 
it hard to refute in any such way as to convert the ad- 
vocates of the political errors involved. The results 
were thus generally wise. In general character the 
constitution adopted followed that of the State of New 
York. A noteworthy feature was the prohibition of 
any and all charters to authorize banks of issue, a pro- 
vision ardently insisted upon by nearly all the members. 
As is well known, and as has before been said, the 
clause prohibiting slavery passed the convention by an 
unanimous vote. 

The convention over, the constitution was submitted 
by its makers to the people, who languidly adopted it 
by a very small but nearly unanimous vote, November 
13, 1849, and elected the first state officers. Riley at 
once gave up his office to the new governor, Burnett, 
although the State was not admitted by a wrangling Con- 
gress until September 9, 1850. Thus began the life of 
a constitutional government that was to continue for 
thirty years without radical change of its organic law. 
The change, when it came, was for the worse. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER : 8ELF-GOVERXMENT, GOOD- 
HUM OJi ADD VIOLENCE IN THE MINES. 

The State, then, was triumphantly created out of the 
very midst of the troubles of the interregnum, and in 
the excitements of the first golden days. But the busy 
scenes of early California life give us, as we follow their 
events, little time for quiet enjoyment of the results of 
even the best social undertakings. The proclamation of 
the sovereign state itself is only as the sound of a trum- 
pet, signaling the beginning of the real social battle. 
Anarchy is a tiling of decrees, and its lesser decrees 
often coexist even with the constitutions that are well- 
conceived and popular. The California pioneers bad now 
to deal with forces, both within themselves and in the 
world beyond, that produced an exciting and not blood- 
less struggle for order, some of whose events, as they 
took place in the mines, in the interior cities, in the 
course of the state politics, and in San Francisco, we 
must try to describe, selecting what will best illustrate 
the problems of the time from the great mass of occur- 
rences, and returning, where it is necessary, to the rela- 
tion of some events that were antecedent to those last 
described. Of the romantic and heroic we shall have 
something to tell, as we go on ; but much of our story 
will concern matters that only the sternest and least ro- 
mantic realism can properly represent. 



272 CALIFORNIA. 

I. THE PHILOSOPHY OF CALIFORNIA HISTORY DURING 
THE GOLDEN DAYS. 

Two very familiar errors exist concerning the Califor- 
nia of the years between 1848 and 1856, both miscon- 
ceptions of the era of the struggle for order. One of 
these errors will have it that, on the whole, there was no 
struggle ; while the other affirms that, on the whole, 
there was no order. In fact there were both, and their 
union is incomprehensible, save as an historical progress 
from lower to higher social conditions. Both the men- 
tioned errors find support, not in authoritative pioneer 
evidence, but in some of the more irresponsible reminis- 
cences of forgetful pioneers, reminiscences that express 
little save a desire to boast, either of the marvelous 
probity, or of the phenomenal wickedness, of their fel- 
lows in the early days. Many pioneers * seem to assume 
that, save their own anecdotes, no sound records of the 
early days are extant. Yet the fact is that, valuable as 
the honest man's memory must be, to retain and convey 
the coloring of the minds and moods of individuals and 
parties, this individual memory cannot be trusted, in gen- 
eral, either for the details of any complex transaction, 
or for an account of the whole state of any large and 
mixed community. And one finds this especially true 
when one reads some of these personal reminiscences of 
the more forgetful California pioneers. In one mood, 
or with one sort of experience, the pioneer can remem- 
ber little but the ardor, the high aims, the generosity, 
the honor, and the good order of the Californian com- 
munity. A few gamblers, a few foreign convicts, a few 

1 E. g., the writer who calls himself William Grey, in his Pioneer 
Times, San Francisco, 1881. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 273 

" greasers " there were, who threw shadows into the 
glorious picture. But they could not obscure it. On the 
other hand, however, another equally boastful memory 
revels in scenes of sanguinary freedom, of lawless popu- 
lar frenzy, of fraud, of drunkenness, of gaining, and of 
murder. According to this memory nothing shall have 
remained pure : most ministers who happened to be 
present gambled, society was ruled by courtesans, no- 
body looked twice at a freshly murdered man, every- 
body gayly joined in lynching any supposed thief, and 
all alike rejoiced in raptures of vicious liberty. These 
are the two extreme views. You can find numbers of 
similarly incomplete intermediate views. The kaleido- 
scopic effect of a series of them can be judged by read- 
ing the conflicting statements that, with a rather unnec- 
essary liberality, Mr. Shinn has added to his own much 
more sober, rational, and well-founded views, in some of 
the less authoritative citations in chapters xi. and xii. 
of his " Mining Camps." 

But these impressions are, as individual impressions, 
once for all doomed to be unhistorical. The experience 
of one man could never reveal the social process, of 
which his life formed but one least element. This pro- 
cess, however, was after all a very simple though widely 
extended moral process, the struggle of society to im- 
press the true dignity and majesty of its claims on way- 
ward and blind individuals, and the struggle of the indi- 
vidual man, meanwhile, to escape, like a fool, from his 
moral obligations to society. This struggle is an old 
one, and old societies do not avoid it ; for every man 
without exception is born to the illusion that the moral 
world is his oyster. But in older societies each man is 
conquered for himself, and is forced in his own time to 
18 



274 CALIFORNIA. 

give up his fool's longings for liberty, and to do a man's 
work as he may, while in a new society, especially in one 
made up largely of men who have left homes and fami- 
lies, who have fled from before the word of the Lord, 
and have sought safety from their old vexatious duties in 
a golden paradise, this struggle being begun afresh by 
all comes to the surface of things. California was full 
of Jonahs, whose modest and possibly unprophetic du- 
ties had lain in their various quiet paths at home. They 
had found out how to escape all these duties, at least for 
the moment, by fleeing over seas and deserts. Strange 
to say, the ships laden with these fugitives sank not, 
but bore them safely to the new land. And in the des- 
erts the wanderers by land found an almost miraculous 
safety. The snares of the god were, however, none the 
less well laid for that, and these hasty feet were soon to 
trip. Whoever sought a fool's liberty here (as which 
of us has not at some time sought it somewhere ?) was 
soon to find all of a man's due bondage prepared for 
him, and doubtless much more. For nowhere and at 
no time are social duties in the end more painful or ex- 
acting than in the tumultuous days of new countries ; 
just as it is harder to work for months on a Vigilance 
Committee than once in a lifetime to sit on a legal jury 
in a quiet town. 

What we have here to do is to understand what forces 
worked for and against order in this community of irre- 
sponsible strangers, and how in time, for their lonely 
freedom, was substituted the long and wearisome toil 
that has caused nearly all the men of that pioneer com- 
munity to die before their due season, or to live even to- 
day, when they do live at all, the life of poverty and dis- 
appointment. Let us name at the outset these forces of 
order and of disorder. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 275 

The great cause of the growth of order in California 
is usually said to be the undoubtedly marvelous political 
talent of our race and nation. And yet, important as that 
cause was, we must not exaggerate it. The very ease 
with which the State on paper could be made lulled to 
sleep the political conscience of the ordinary man, and 
from the outset gave too much self-confidence to the 
community. The truly significant social order, which 
requires not only natural political instinct, but also vol- 
untary and loyal devotion to society, was often rather 
retarded than hastened in its coming by the political 
facility of the people. What helped still more than 
instinct was the courage, the moral elasticity, the teach- 
ableness, of the people. Their greatest calamities they 
learned to laugh at, their greatest blunders they soon 
recovered from ; and even while they boasted of their 
prowess, and denied their sins, they would quietly go 
on to correct their past grievous errors, good-humored 
and self-confident as ever. A people such as this are in 
the long run favored of heaven, although outwardly 
they show little proper humility or contrition. For in 
time they learn the hardest lessons, by dint of obstinate 
cheerfulness in enduring their bitter experiences, and of 
wisdom in tacitly avoiding their past blunders. 

Against order, however, worked especially two ten- 
dencies in early California : one this aforementioned 
general sense of irresponsibility, and the other a dis- 
eased local exaggeration of our common national feel- 
ing towards foreigners, an exaggeration for which the 
circumstances of the moment were partly responsible. 
The first tendency pioneers admit, though not in all its 
true magnitude ; the second they seldom recognize at all, 
charging to the foreigners themselves whatever trouble 
was due to our brutal ill-treatment of them. 



276 CALIFORNIA. 

As for the first tendency, it is the great key to the 
problem of the worst troubles of early California. The 
new-comers, viewed as a mass, were homeless. They 
sought wealth, and not a social order. They were, for 
the most part, as Americans, decently trained in the du- 
ties of a citizen ; and as to courage and energy they were 
picked men, capable, when their time should come for 
showing true manhood, of sacrificing their vain hopes, 
and enduring everything. But their early quest was at 
all events an unmoral one ; and when they neglected 
their duties as freemen, as citizens, and as brethren 
among brethren, their quest became not merely un- 
moral, but positively sinful. And never did the jour- 
neying pillar, of cloud by day and of fire by night, 
teach to the legendary wanderers in the desert more 
unmistakably by signs and wonders the eternal law, 
than did the fortunes of these early Californians dis- 
play to them, through the very accidents of daily life, 
the majesty of the same law of order and of loyalty 
to society. In the air, as it were, the invisible divine 
net of social duties hung, and descending, enmeshed ir- 
resistibly all these gay and careless fortune-hunters even 
while they boasted of their freedom. Every piece of 
neglected social work they had to do over again, with 
many times the toil. Every slighted duty avenged itself 
relentlessly on the community that had despised it. 

However, in the early days, there was also that other 
agency at work for disorder, whose influence is to blame 
for much, although not for all, nor even for most, of the 
degrada ion that the new State passed through. This 
was a brutal tendency, and yet it was very natural, 
and, like all natural brutality, it was often, in any in- 
dividual man, a childishly innocent tendency. It was a 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 277 

hearty American contempt for things and institutions 
and people that were stubbornly foreign, and that would 
not conform themselves to American customs and wishes. 
Representatives of their nation these gold-seeking Cali- 
fornian Americans were ; yet it remains true, and is, 
under the circumstances, a very natural result, that the 
American had nowhere else, save perhaps as conqueror 
in Mexico itself, shown so blindly and brutally as he 
often showed in early California, his innate intoler- 
ance for whatever is stubbornly foreign. No Ameri- 
can of sense can be proud when he reflects upon these 
doings of his countrymen, both towards the real for- 
eigners and towards those who were usually confounded 
with such, namely, the native Californians. Least of 
all can a native American Californian, like the author, 
rejoice to remember how the community from which 
he sprang treated both their fellow -intruders in the 
land, and his own fellows, the born citizens of this dear 
soil, themselves. All this tale is one of disgrace to 
our people. But it is none the less true, and none the 
less profitable to know. For this hatred of foreign- 
ers, this blind nativism, are we not all alike born to 
it ? And what but reflection, and our chance measure 
of cultivation, checks it in any of us ? 

If we leave out the unprovoked violence frequently 
offered to foreigners, we may then say that the well- 
known crises and tragedies of violent popular justice 
during the struggle for order were frequently neither 
directly and in themselves crimes of the community, as 
conservative people have often considered them, nor yet 
merely expressions of righteous indignation on the part 
of an innocent and outraged society; but they were 
simply the outward symptoms in each case of the past 



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280 CALIFORNIA. 

swiftest punishment, — petty theft with flogging and 
banishment, graver crimes with death ; although every 
accused man was given, in all the more orderly camps, 
the right of a trial, and usually of a jury trial, in the 
presence of the assembled miners. In brief, the new 
mining camp was a little republic, practically independ- 
ent for a time of the regular State officers, often very 
unwilling to submit to outside interference even with its 
criminal justice, and well able to keep its own simple 
order temporarily intact. Its general peacefulness well 
exhibited the native Anglo-Saxon spirit of compromise, 
as well as our most familiar American national trait, 
namely, that already mentioned formal public good-hu- 
mor, which you can observe amongst us in any crowded 
theatre lobby or street-car, and which, while indicating 
nothing as to the private individual characters of the 
men who publicly and formally show it, is still of great 
use in checking or averting public disturbances, and is 
also of some material harm, in disposing us, as a nation, 
to submit to numerous manifest public annoyances, im- 
positions, and frauds. Most useful this quality is in a 
community made up of mutual strangers ; and one finds 
it best developed in our far western communities. 

These two qualities then, the willingness to compro- 
mise matters in dispute, and the desire to be in public 
on pleasant terms with everybody, worked in new camps 
wonders for good order. We read, on good authority, 
of gold left in plain sight, unguarded and unmolested, 
for days together ; of grave disputes, involving vast 
wealth, decided by calm arbitration ; of weeks and 
months during which many camps lived almost free 
from secret theft, and quite free from open violence. 
We find pioneers gloomily lamenting those days, when 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 281 

social order was so cheap, so secure, and so profitable. 
And all these things give us a high idea of the native 
race instinct that could thus express itself impromptu 
even for a brief period. 

But "vve must still insist : all this view of the mining 
life is one-sided, because this good order, widely spread 
as it often undoubtedly was, was still in its nature unsta- 
ble, since it had not been won as a prize of social de- 
votion, but only attained by a sudden feat of instinctive 
cleverness. The social order is, however, something that 
instinct must make in its essential elements, by a sort 
of first intention, but that only voluntary devotion can 
secure against corruption. Secured, however, against 
the worst corruption the mining camp life was not, so 
long as it rested in this first stage. 

For this is what we see when we turn to the other, 
still more familiar, picture. Violence leaves a deeper 
impression than peace ; and that may explain very read- 
ily why some boasting pioneers, and many professional 
story-tellers, have combined to describe to us the mining 
camp as a place where blood was cheaper than gold, 
where nearly all gambled, where most men had shot 
somebody, where the most disorderly lynching was the 
only justice, and where, in short, disorder was supreme. 
Such scenes were of course never as a fact universal, 
and nowhere did they endure long. That we must once 
for all bear in mind. Yet when we turn away from the 
exaggerations and absurdities of the mere story-tellers 
and the boasters, and when we look at the contempo- 
rary records, we find, never indeed so bad a general 
state of things throughout the mines as the one just de- 
scribed, but at all events at certain times a great deal 
of serious and violent disorder in many camps. To what 



282 CALIFORNIA, 

was all this due ? The first answer is suggested by a 
chronological consideration. The camps of 1848 began 
with orderly and friendly life, but in some cases degen- 
erated before the season was done. The camps of 1849 
are described, by those who best knew them, as on the 
whole remarkably orderly. By the middle of 1850 we 
meet with a few great disturbances, like those in Sonora. 
By the beginning of 1851 complaints are general and 
quickly lead up to violence ; one looks back to 1849 as 
to the golden age of good order, and one even laments 
the coming of the state government, which has brought 
the semblance, but not the substance of law. In the 
older camps, 1851 thus marks the culmination of the 
first phase of the struggle for order, while newer camps 
are of course still in their first love. This paroxysm of 
social rebirth passes, and a more stable order seems for 
a time to succeed, in many parts of the mines ; yet, 
according to the age and the population of individual 
camps, similar struggles are repeated, all through the 
early years. This simple chronological consideration, 
which we hardly need confirm by detailed references 
just here, since it is well known, and will sufficiently ap- 
pear in the following, shows that disorder was not the 
initial stage of the mining camps, but was a corrupt 
stage, through which they were apt to pass. The nature 
and the causes of the disorder must appear from what 
we can learn of the details in the newspapers and other 
records of the time. 

III. PAN AND CRADLE AS SOCIAL AGENTS : MINING 
SOCIETY IN THE SUMMER OF 1848. 

To understand these records, however, one must re- 
member the general facts about the origin, the growth, 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 283 

and the aspects, physical and social, of any mining 
camp. A camp, at first an irregular collection of tents 
about some spot where gold had been discovered, as- 
sumed form, in time, by the laying out of streets ; and if 
its life continued, for its tents were substituted, first 
"cloth houses," and then wooden buildings, among 
which, a little later, fire-proof structures would begin to 
appear. While some camps grew upon " flats," the sit- 
uations of the early camps were generally in the deep 
ravines, close under the vast frowning cliffs that rise 
on each side of the narrow canons of the larger Sierra 
rivers. 1 Those in the lowest foot-hills were, however, 
sometimes surrounded only by gentler slopes, or by 
bluffs of moderate height. The bars of the larger riv- 
ers, the gravel in the tributary ravines, and a few gravel 
deposits that were far enough from water to be called 
" dry diggings," were at first the chief accessible sources 
of the gold. 

Moral growth is everywhere impossible without favor- 
able physical conditions. It has seldom been noticed 
by later writers that the social condition of the camps 
was, in the successive years and despite all good inten- 
tions, largely and almost irresistibly determined by the 
various successively predominant methods of mining. 
To understand this fact we need only to follow some of 
the early accounts of these methods, associated as many 
of them are with descriptions of the local habits and 
customs of the moment. To the most of the new-com- 

1 The seventh letter of "Shirley," in Ewer's Pioneer, vol. ii. p. 91, 
gives vivid impressions of the scenery and situation of Indian Bar, 
on the Feather. The letter was written in October. "At present," 
she says, "the sun does not condescend to shine upon Indian Bar at 
all." So it was all through the winter. No one who has had a glimpse 
of the Sierras will fail to remember such places along the canons. 



284 CALIFORNIA. 

ers all mining was novel, and they describe the myste- 
ries of the art with enthusiastic detail. Let us begin in 
1848 with Walter Colton. 1 " I went among the gold- 
diggers," he says, " found half a dozen at the bottom of 
the ravine, tearing up the bogs, and up to their knees in 
mud. Beneath these bogs lay a bed of clay, sprinkled 
in spots with gold. These deposits, and the earth 
mixed with them, were shovelled into bowls, taken to a 
pool near by, and washed out. The bowl, in working, 
is held in both hands, whirled violently back and forth 
through half a circle, and pitched this way and that suffi- 
ciently to throw off the earth and water, while the gold 
settles to the bottom. The process is extremely labo- 
rious, and taxes the entire muscles of the frame. In its 
effect it is more like swinging a scythe than any work I 
ever attempted." This " pan " work was at first very 
general, although miners did not usually work in just 
such places as this. It has retained its place in the 
prospector's life, and in mining in new placers, ever 
since, although the handling of the pan may be made 
less laborious than it was to Colton's muscles. A little 
more practice, and the use of a current of water, such 
as usually could be found at hand, or reached by carry- 
ing the earth down from " dry diggings," helped to 
make the pan-washing itself no very hard toil for strong 
arms. The digging, however, no practice could im- 
prove, or render anything but the most wearisome of 
tasks. In washing with the pan, in a running stream, 
one began each washing by holding the pan, half full of 
dirt, a little under the current of water. Shaking, or 
even sometimes stirring the contents, and throwing out 
with the hand the larger stones, one gradually raised the 
1 Three Years in California, p. 274. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 285 

pan out of the current, as the earth dissolved away and 
was carried off in the stream. At last the motion and 
the flow of water carried off the whole mass, save a little 
black sand mingled with the gold particles. After dry- 
ing this, one could get rid of the sand by blowing, or, 
as was customary in later times, by clearing away iron 
particles with a magnet. 1 

At best, however, pan-mining was, in proportion to 
the amount of gravel washed, a slow and tedious pro- 
cess. Even the richest diggings were thus apt to prove 
disappointing, and, socially regarded, the pan, if it had 
remained long the predominating instrument of mining 
work, would have precluded any rapid or secure prog- 
ress in the organized life of the camps. In 1848, while 
the larger and more accessible camps rapidly began the 
use of " machines," newer camps were still constantly 
being formed by men who wished to seek their fortunes 
through the independent use of their pans. And the 
easily learned art of pan-mining was a very demoraliz- 
ing one, so long as a great proportion of the miners 
could still hope to get rich by it. Colton, whose experi- 
ences lay where " machines " were less used, and pans 
the rule, describes to us men mining in numbers near to- 
gether, sometimes within sound of numberless querulous 
" prairie-wolves," 2 who had not yet been thinned out, or 
driven to be as shy as the surviving ones now are in Cal- 
ifornia hills ; but the men he makes as wandering, and 

1 For an account of the very simple process of " panning," see Hit- 
tell' s Resources of California, 6th ed. p. 314. For the use of the 
pan in 1848, see further Foster's Gold Regions of California, p. 20 
(Larkin's letter). Also see Brooks, Four Months among the Gold- 
Finders (London and New York, 1849), pp. 36, 37, 41. 

2 Colton, p. 279. The "prairie-wolf" is of course identical with 
the " co vote." 



286 CALIFORNIA. 

often as discontented, as the wolves ; independent of their 
fellow laborers ; quite capable, of course, of ready and 
unexactingly simple camp organizations ; x but not led to 
undertake any very serious social duties. Where each 
man toiled with his pan, he hardly needed to speak to 
his next neighbor, who was mainly an object of curiosity 
or of envy, in case he either showed symptoms of hav- 
ing made some discovery, or proved his greater luck by 
the gold he could display. The means of getting sup- 
plies from the coast, in these less accessible camps, were 
subject to all sorts of uncertainties ; and, so long as the 
pan was very largely used among implements of mining, 
affairs must remain so. For pan-mining left it doubt- 
ful where one's market would be, almost from day to 
day, a thing that no dealer could safely long tolerate. 2 
Hence the enormous prices, the untrustworthy markets, 
and the occasional apj>roaches to starvation in the newer 
mines. 

1 See also Mr. Shinn's Mining Camps, chaps, ix. and x. 

2 The local predominance of the pan over the cradle is shown by Col- 
ton when (p. 281) after describing the cradle, he adds: ''Most of the 
diggers use a bowl or pan ; its lightness never embarrasses their roving 
habits; and it can be put in motion wherever they may find a stream or 
spring. It can be purchased now in the mines for five or six dollars ; 
a few months since it cost an ounce." This evidence of course holds 
only for the camps seen by Colton. The fall in price ma}* have been 
due to the increasing use of the cradles; but it must be remembered 
that Indian willow-baskets, or any other possible and easily portable 
substitutes for bowls, were then eagerly accepted. The restlessness of 
these pan-miners exceeded the well-known uneasiness of the later 
mining communities, just because there was lacking for them every 
motive to permanency in any camp save actual and continuous great 
success, while the. rudeness of the pan as an instrument made great 
success almost always transient. See instances of sudden migrations 
and restlessness, and remarks upon the fact in Colton, pp. 293, 302, 
314. "As for mutual aid and sympathy," he says, " Samson's foxes 
had as much of it, turned tail to, with firebrands tied between." 
This is of course a little Coltonian. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 287 

The pan as sole instrument for gold-washing was, 
then, sociologically and morally, as well as economically 
considered, a great evil for the mining life ; and one can 
be glad that its time of more extended use was so short. 
Already in 1848 many men, and some whole camps, 
were desiring and using " machines," as they are at first 
rather vaguely called in the accounts, e. g., as Larkin 
calls them ; * and Larkin himself had one of them made 
for a native miner, at the latter's order, in Monterey : 
" a log dug out, with a riddle and sieve made of willow 
boughs on it," costing, he tells us, one hundred and 
twenty dollars, " payable in gold dust at fourteen dol- 
lars an ounce." Mason, according to his report of Au- 
gust IT, 2 had found on July 5 the greater part of the 
miners at the Mormon or lower diggings already using 
the cradle: u a rude machine," "on rockers, six or 
eight feet long, open at the foot, and, at its head, a 
coarse grate or sieve ; the bottom is rounded, with small 
cleats nailed across. Four men are required to work 
this machine : one digs the ground in the bank close by 
the stream ; another carries it to the cradle, and emp- 
ties it on the grate ; a third gives a violent rocking mo- 
tion to the machine ; while a fourth dashes on water 
from the stream itself." — " The sieve keeps the coarse 
stones from entering the cradle, the current of water 
washes off the earthy matter, and the gravel is gradu- 
ally carried out at the foot of the machine, leaving the 
gold mixed with a heavy fine black sand above the first 
cleats. The sand and gold mixed together are then 
drawn off through auger holes into a pan below, are 

1 See his letter above cited, p. 19 of Foster's Gold Regions of Cali- 
fornia. 

2 I quote here again from Foster, p. 10. 



288 CALIFORNIA. 

dried in the sun, and afterwards separated by blowing 
off the sand." Essential to the success of the cradle 
was of course its inclined position. In the form de- 
scribed, it has remained in occasional use without change 
of principle ever since, although it is less rudely made ; 
but in large, permanent, and steadily productive diggings 
it is not useful. Its position soon became a very subor- 
dinate one, and later it became a rare sight. 

For the time, however, the cradle was a step in ad- 
vance, physically and morally. Gravels that the pan- 
miner contemptuously abandoned were well worth work- 
ing on this plan. Camps that would have been deserted 
remained, and were prosperous. The great thing, 
however, from the sociological point of view, was that 
men now had voluntarily, and in an organized way, to 
work together. The miner's partnership, which grew up 
in this second stage of mining life, soon became one 
of the closest of California relationships, and, as such, 
has been widely and not unjustly celebrated in song 
and story. This accidentally primitive society had 
passed from a state of " nature," in the old sense of the 
word (this state of " nature " being indeed here a state 
of unstable peace, not of general war), and had be- 
come a collection of mutually more or less independent, 
but inwardly united Bands. Rapidly as the successive 
stages of this growth passed by, they still left their 
mark on the social order, as we shall soon see. 

The summary of the situation in the small community 
of the early golden days is, then, that the first estab- 
lished and more crowded camps quickly passed into the 
second stage of mining life, substituting for the pan the 
cradle, while numerous dissatisfied gold-seekers were 
constantly hunting for new diggings, and founding new 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 289 

camps, using meanwhile for the most part the pan. 
The resulting total of social condition is hard to de- 
scribe, for lack of good evidence. Mr. Shinn's account 
above cited, although well told, and founded in large 
measure on a fair sort of pioneer evidence, is still one- 
sided, and is too optimistic. I have more confidence in 
a direct use, as far as it goes, of the very frank and unas- 
suming contemporary story of Dr. Brooks, also already 
cited. J. Tyrwhitt Brooks, an English physician, just 
then from Oregon, visited the gold region in the midst 
of the first excitement, in an improvised company from 
the coast-region, consisting at first of six white men and 
one Indian, and later considerably larger. The party, in 
the various stages of its life, contained both Englishmen 
and Americans, and included one Californian gentleman 
of some position. These partners were nearly all mutu- 
ally quite new acquaintances ; one was supposed to be a 
deserting sailor ; none knew anything at the start about 
mining. For some time they had good luck ; in the end 
they lost nearly all their gains ; their fortunes were on 
the whole characteristic. The account of Dr. Brooks, 
as published, contains numerous misprinted dates, since 
the volume, which comprises the Doctor's diary of the 
expedition, with some remarks, was sent home as a 
bundle of MS. for the private use of his friends, and 
was thereupon printed without the author's supervision. 
Allowing for the plain misprints, the chronology of the 
account nevertheless agrees well enough with that of 
events otherwise known from the Mason and Larkin 
letters ; and Brooks seems to be a perfeecly trustworthy 
observer. 

At the Mormon diggings, Brooks " stirred " his first 
" pailful " of earth. He found (loc. cit., p. 36) many 
19 



290 CALIFORNIA. 

of the diggers there washing with "pots," others, as 
would seem, even washing directly from their spades, 
using these as very rough pans. Many, however, used 
cradles, and Brooks and his companions, quickly weary- 
ing of pan-work, made their own cradles out of rough 
boards in a day or two, and worked together. The 
habit of employing companies of Indians to do the 
mining for some one white adventurer was common 
enough ; but the mass of the miners worked either 
singly, or in the small cradle-parties. The miners of 
the Mormon diggings were all conscious, even at this 
time, of a controlling customary law, quickly formed, as 
it seemed to them, but at all events derived from no one 
discoverable present source. Thus (p. 46) it was gen- 
erally understood that a lump of gold more than half 
an ounce in weight, if picked up from the freshly dug 
earth by a member of a party mining in partnership, 
" before the earth was thrown into the cradle," be- 
longed to the finder personally, and not to the party. 
As for society, that at the Mormon diggings was quickly 
under the sway of a few native Californian families, of 
respectable and sociable character, who appeared under 
the protection of their heads, well-to-do native citizens, 
who had chosen to seek gold in good company. The 
wives of these men were waited on by Indian servants ; 
they gave their usual Californian attention to bright 
dress and good-fellowship, and held very delightful 
dancing parties in the evenings " on the green, before 
some of the tents " (p. 47). The friendly and well- 
disposed camp joined largely in these parties, and found 
it very naturally " quite a treat after a hard day's work, 
to go at nightfall to one of these fandangoes." Brooks 
gives us no impression that he ever found these enter- 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 291 

tainments at that place and time in any wise of suspi- 
cious character, although he thinks that the gentlemen 
sometimes drank a little more than was proper, so that 
the merriment was occasionally " animated and impos- 
ing" (p. 48). Of the ladies, the wives and daughters 
of the Californians, he had nothing but good to say. 

With regret Brooks and his fellows bade farewell to 
these fair entertainers of society at the Mormon dig- 
gings, and on the first of July left the now over- 
crowded place for the North Fork, having first sold 
their two cradles at auction for three hundred and sev- 
enty-five dollars in gold dust at fourteen dollars to the 
ounce. At the site of Coloma, they found Marshall 
mining with a company of Indians, and they spent a 
day or two near this place themselves, working in dry 
diggings, and carrying the earth down to the stream to 
wash. Thence they went on, to Weber's Creek, passing 
on the way Sinclair, at work with his Indians. Reach- 
ing a new camp here, whose members were scattered 
over the stream-bed and up the neighboring ravines, 
they made for themselves new cradles by hollowing out 
logs, and began to employ Indians to help them (p. 57). 
Here they were when Colonel Mason visited the mines. 
But these diggings also were quickly overcrowded by 
wandering miners, of whom " about half work together 
in companies — the other half shift each for himself " 
(p. 59). The lonely men were evidently pan-miners. 
The Indians also crowded the place in hundreds, worked 
for bright clothing and whiskey, and staggered about 
drunk. The miners of Brooks's party grew discon- 
tented. There was doubtless plenty of gold on Bear 
River ; a trapper told about the region, and consented 
to guide the party thither for " sixty-five dollars and 



292 CALIFORNIA. 

his food." The Brooks party had much trouble in get- 
ting provisions enough for their journey, as everything 
was " inordinately dear," so that they had to content 
themselves with bacon, dried beef, and coffee (p. 61). 
They at this time received and accepted offers from 
three or four strangers to join their company, which 
was thus strengthened against Indians. Hard toil, 
under good guidance, but through a very rough country, 
brought them over the hills to Bear River Valley, where, 
after finding rich gravels, they began once more to make 
cradles, and to build a large, roughly fortified shanty, 
for protection against the Indians. They made a 
stricter division of labor than before, and toiled fruit- 
fully for some time. The life was at best a hard one, 
and Brooks found himself very lonesome, and home- 
sick. At night, around the camp-fire, the trapper-guide 
told great tales of the deserts beyond the Sierras, and 
of the horrible dangers of the unknown expanse of the 
Great Salt Lake, on to whose " dark turbid waters," as 
he declared, " no living being has yet been found dar- 
ing enough to venture far," owing to a mysterious whirl- 
pool there said to exist. The country about them was 
rugged, and still little visited ; and was as romantic 
and bewildering to them as were the trapper's nightly 
yarns. Their diggings, however, proved very rich. 

At this point trouble began. First some " horse- 
thief " Indians appeared, and succeeded in galloping off 
with several of their horses. In a brush with these In- 
dians one of the Brooks party was killed. Next, as the 
time grew near when the season would force them to 
forsake the lonely golden valley, sickness appeared in 
the camp, provisions ran low, and the mass of gold-dust 
now accumulated in their cabin began to seem to them, 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 293 

after the Indian fight, a perilous wealth. For Indians 
too by this time desired gold to exchange for fire-water. 
While the trapper, with one man, accordingly set out 
for Sutter's Fort, to get provisions, three of the party, 
including the Caiifornian gentleman, were deputed to 
carry the gold-dust to San Francisco, while the others 
were to toil out the season, and divide gains with those 
sent away. Success, however, had already engendered 
jealousy and suspicion. The party were very near an 
open quarrel (p. 78) over the choice of the men to be 
intrusted with the gold, and one of the three actually 
sent, a friend of Brooks, who had accompanied him 
from Oregon, was intended by Brooks and some others 
to watch his fellow-messengers. 

On the way with the gold, the three messengers were 
suddenly attacked by mounted robbers, who lassoed and 
badly injured this third man, and escaped with his horse 
and saddle-bags, the latter containing the bulk of the gold 
itself. The unjust suspicions of which Brooks frankly 
makes confession, by causing this man to be the carrier 
of most of the treasure, had resulted in the loss of nearly 
the whole outcome of the long toil. The robbers were 
native Californians and Indians ; and one of them, who 
who was killed in the fight, was, Brooks declares, on the 
report given by miners who recognized him, " one of 
the disbanded soldiers of the late Caiifornian army, by 
name Tomas Maria Carrillo ; a man of the very worst 
character, who had connected himself with a small band 
of depredators, whose occupation was to lay [sic] in 
wait at convenient spots along the roads in the neigh- 
borhood of the seacoast, and from thence to pounce 
upon and plunder any unfortunate merchant or ranchero 
that might be passing unprotected that way. The gang 



294 CALIFORNIA. 

had now evidently abandoned the coast to try their for- 
tunes in the neighborhood of the mines ; and, judging 
from the accounts which one of the miners gave of the 
number of robberies that had recently taken place there- 
abouts, their mission had been eminently successful" 
(p. 82).' 

This characteristic event, the outcome of the scattered 
condition of society at the moment, and of the demoral- 
izing old. days of the conquest, led Brooks to learn of 
several equally characteristic occurrences of other sorts 
in neighboring mines. The companions of the wounded 
man were possibly aided in repulsing the robbers by the 
approach of a band of mounted miners, who opportunely 
appeared just after the assailants had fled. The new- 
comers, however, declined to take any trouble to help 
the wounded man, but, as the messengers related to 
Brooks, " coolly turned their horses' heads round, and 
left us alone with our dying friend, not deigning further 
to notice our appeals." Every man looked out for him- 
self in those days, as one sees ; and when the two mes- 
sengers, after at last getting, by their begging a little, 
help, managed to bring their friend — not dying, in- 
deed, but badly hurt — to a near camp, they could only 
return alone and disheartened to the old spot on the 
Bear River, and tell their strange tale to the rest. The 
whole party thereupon spent a night about the camp-fire 
in sullen silence, broken only by occasional bitter or sus- 
picious speeches, until the dawn found them weary, 
haggard, and disgusted. What gold was left they quar- 
reled over during the morning, and having at last 
weighed it out in parcels, they separated finally into two 

1 Of this Tomas M. Carrillo, Mr. H. H. Bancroft's list of pioneers 
knows only this one fact, as told by Brooks. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 295 

parties, of which one, with Brooks, set off to the camp 
where the wounded man had been left. On the way 
they met the trapper, who, with his one companion, had 
previously gone to Sutter's Fort for supplies. These 
two also had had their adventures, which they now pro- 
ceeded to tell. The trapper and his comrade found 
flour as much as eighty-five dollars a barrel at Sutter's 
Fort. On the way back, their pack-horses were stolen, 
one night, with their packs of provisions. When they 
appealed to the miners of a neighboring camp for help 
in finding the thieves, they were only treated with rude- 
ness and suspicion, and one of the miners drove them 
off with his rifle (p. 86). He later proved to be what 
his friends called a peaceably-disposed man, whose 
brusqueness of manner was the result of the large quan- 
tity of gold-dust that fortune had given him, and of 
the fact that he consequently demanded proper intro- 
duction of people who came to call on him. To be sure, 
his desire to be alone had already led him to feel it his 
duty to shoot and kill two men, so that some of his 
neighbors called him a " terror " ; but, as appears from 
p. 89, others justified him, on the ground that he had 
shot only people who needed shooting. Such an asser- 
tion, under such circumstances, admitted of no proper 
verification ; but, at all events, his manners lacked deli- 
cacy, and the two Brooks party men felt aggrieved at 
the imperfect public spirit in this whole camp, near 
which their pack-horses had so mysteriously disappeared. 
The two had yet other sad things to tell Brooks of the 
state of society at this little camp ; for some men there 
had their arms in slings, and others said that such inju- 
ries were common in those diggings after people had 
chanced to differ in opinion. 



296 CALIFORNIA. 

Brooks and his party from Bear River exchanged 
their own little tale of disaster with the one thus con- 
fided to them by the trapper and his comrade, and then 
went on to hunt for the wounded friend. Him they 
found slowly recovering from his injuries and lying in 
a shanty. But the camp where he was staying was 
sickly. " Fever was prevalent, and I Jlound," says 
Brooks, " that more than two thirds of the people at 
this settlement were unable to move out of their tents. 
The other third were too selfish to render them any 
assistance" (p. 87). It was even hard to find a burial- 
place when one was dead ; for these miners " denied 
the poor corpses of their former friends a few feet of 
earth for a grave, and left the bodies exposed for the 
wolf to prey upon." The season, in fact, was nearly 
done, and men were now frantic for the gold. 

All this was surely an unpleasant state of affairs ; 
though 1848 is the season that Mr. Henry Degroot, as 
quoted by Mr. Shinn, 1 seems to look back upon as con- 
taining " all that was staid and primitive in or about 
the mines of California." But we have already seen, 
in Dr. Brooks's account of the happy fandangoes " on 
the green " at the Mormon diggings, how capable he 
was of picturing the pleasant side of this seemingly so 
irresponsible and accidental life, and how different the 
view of a man in another camp at the same time might 
have been. One also sees, however, the impossibility 
of doubting that, in these pan-mining days, with only 
about half of a camp using the rocker, and with no 
miners connected in any form of close personal organi- 

1 Mining Camps, p. 122. It is proper to add that Mr. Degroot, as 
appears by his article in the Overland Monthly for April, 1874, ar- 
rived in 1849, and knew of 1848 only by hearsay. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 297 

zation, save such as the rocker-parties implied, irrespon- 
sibility meant almost universal selfishness beyond the 
limits of one's own party, and selfishness, in the long 
run, meant disorder and occasional violence, with a very 
bad social outlook ahead, despite the readiness where- 
with rough camp organizations could always be made 
for the momentary repression of more intolerable crime 
or for the settlement of greater disputes. 

At all events, in these last days of the season of 1848 
Brooks found everybody talking of disorder and inse- 
curity. His friend was, indeed, safe enough, and was 
well cared for by a " kind Californian nurse and her 
husband," whose " kind treatment of my poor friend 
offered a striking contrast to the callous selfishness 
around." But, when Brooks himself set out towards 
Sutter's Fort, he heard reports of trouble all about him. 
Nobody left his gold in his tent ; everybody carried it 
on his own person ; and the number of missing men 
" whose own friends had not thought it worth while to 
go in search of them " was considerable. One or two 
dead bodies were found floating in the river, " which 
circumstance was looked upon as indicative of foul 
play ; " as a gold-digger who was drowned by accident 
ought, people said, to have enough gold about him to 
keep his body under water. The characteristic fact 
that nobody was known by Brooks to have taken any 
trouble to look closely at these dead bodies, to verify or 
disprove, by examining for direct signs of foul play, this 
a priori reasoning, is only indirectly indicated by our 
author. " Open attempts at robbery," he adds, " were 
rare ; it was in the stealthy night-time that thieves 
prowled about, and, entering the little tents, occupied 
by not more than perhaps a couple of miners, neither of 



298 CALIFORNIA. 

whom, in all probability, felt inclined to keep a weary- 
watch," stole what could be found. Going further on 
his way, Brooks came to the ill-humored camp near 
which the trapper had lost the provisions. Here he saw 
a group of miners drinking brandy " at a dollar a dram." 
As the greater part of them were " suffering from fe- 
ver," the doctor himself seriously disapproved of their 
course, on professional as well as on economic grounds. 
Nevertheless, he found time to learn a few facts in favor 
of the much maligned inhabitants. They were selfish 
and dissipated, but they meant well in their way. 

Weary of such things, he reached Sacramento, and 
then went on to Monterey, where he joined in a fruit- 
less pursuit into the Tulare region of a robber-band, 
who were reported to be identical with the assailants of 
the gold-bearing messengers. The result of the pursuit 
was only more weariness, and a sight of prairie, thicket, 
and hill. In sullen silence the pursuers at last rode 
back to Monterey, sick at heart. As for those who 
still remained together of the original party, there was 
nothing to do but to part. The resolution to do so 
" was not come to without something like a pang — a 
pang which I sincerely felt, and which I believe was 
more or less experienced by us all. We had lived for 
four months in constant companionship, and a friend- 
ship, more vivid than can well be imagined in civilized 
lands to have been the growth of so short a period, had 
sprung up betwixt us. There had been a few petty 
bickerings between us, and some unjust suspicions on 
my part ; but these were all forgotten." The remaining 
gold was divided, and " the same night we had a sup- 
per, at which a melancholy joviality was in the ascend- 
ant, and the next day shook hands and parted." " On 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 299 

waking the next morning," says Brooks, " I found that 
I was alone." 

In this account there is one thing to be noted ; namely, 
that Brooks is uncommonly objective in his fashions of 
speech. He has no discoverable aim save to tell a 
plain story, and often tells things to his own disadvan- 
tage. Hence one may have a reasonable confidence in 
his accuracy. His own summary is especially note- 
worthy, as given in his introductory letter to a relative, 
written after the diary. Of the country itself he speaks 
well : " I assure you it is hardly possible for any ac- 
counts of the gold-mines to be exaggerated. The El 
Dorado has really been discovered" (p. 13). But of 
the social condition he has only a gloomy account to 
give : " I have worked hard and undergone some hard- 
ships ; and, thanks to the now almost lawless state of 
the country, I have been deprived of the mass of my 
savings, and must, when the dry season comes round 
again, set to work almost new. . . . My own case is 
that of many others. As the number of diggers and 
miners augmented, robberies and violence became fre- 
quent. At first, when we arrived at the Mormon dig- 
gings, for example, everything was tranquil. Every 
man worked for himself, without disturbing his neigh- 
bor. Now the scene is widely changed indeed." Al- 
lowing for a little momentary depression, we may still 
regard the account given by Brooks, and confirmed 
by the details of his story, as a fair one, on the whole, 
so far as his own experience could guide him, and his 
experience is plainly no insignificant one. 

How shall we reconcile this tale of transient peace- 
fulness, followed by weary selfishness, bickering, and 
violence, with the much brighter picture of 1848, given 



300 CALIFORNIA. 

on the basis of his own pioneer evidence, by Mr. Shinn ? 
The method of reconciliation seems to me clear enough. 
The quickly organized and, at the first, peaceful camp 
of 1848 was an easily cultivated and soon withering 
flower, which could not well live to the end of the Cali- 
fornia dry season. There was no unity of interest to 
preserve its simple forms from degeneracy. The camp 
consisted of a perfectly transient group of utterly rest- 
less and disconnected men, who had not the slightest 
notion of staying where they were more than a few 
weeks. When a country-side was full of such groups, 
disorder, before many months should pass, was simply 
inevitable. Skill in improvising organizations could not 
avert the result. Moreover, the life in small partner- 
ships involved, despite the idyllic character of the re- 
lations of " pards," almost every possible temptation 
that could act to make a good-humored man quarrel- 
some. Rough camp-life, among novices, is almost al- 
ways as full of bickering as of good-fellowship. Good- 
humor in public meetings, or in the camp at large, with 
private petty quarrels going on meanwhile — this was 
the common condition. The affray in the Donner party 
has already, in an earlier chapter, suggested this really 
very trite reflection to us, and we need not dwell on it 
here. The practiced camper recovers his even temper, 
but the novice is long subject to bearishness. The mat- 
ter is largely physical. The civilized man becomes 
soon peevish, with the irregular meals and the monotony 
of camp-life, and may show, even to his best friend, an 
hitherto unsuspected brutality of mood and behavior. 

What public spirit there was in 1848 showed itself 
best, as Mr. Shinn has pointed out, in the regulation of 
the miner's temporary land-tenure and in the settlement 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 301 

of disputes about mining rights. But the life, on the 
whole, was seriously demoralizing to all concerned in it, 
and must remain so until more elaborate methods of 
mining should be introduced. 

IV. MINING SOCIETY IN 1849 AND 1850, AND THE 
BEGINNING OF SLUICE-MINING. 

The small partnership and cradle system of mining 
was also, as we know, the common system of 1849, and 
of the early part of 1850. In a noted, but now, at least 
in the herein cited first edition, quite rare pamphlet, 1 
one finds the experience of 1848 and of the early sum- 
mer of 1849, summed up in a way that is very instruct- 
ive for our present purpose. On page 34, the new-comer 
receives advice as to his needs. First of all he is told 
to carry little baggage ; as " it will always impede his free 
movement, if he should want to go from place to place. 
He should have absolutely nothing more than what he 
can carry on a beast, if he be able to have one ; or, if 
not, what he can shoulder himself. The less one brings 
to the mines, the better prospect of success he may 
have." A change of clothing, a pair of blankets, a pick- 
axe, a spade (a winding-sheet is not mentioned), a crow- 
bar, a pan, a sheath-knife, a trowel ; such is the outfit 
for the single miner. " A washing-machine," however, 
" is used when there are two or more working in part- 
nership." This machine is then described in its simpler 
form very much as above, and one recently imported 
improvement, the " Burke Rocker," a sort of transition 
to the later " Long Tom," is praised. All other cle- 

1 California as it is, and as it may be, or a Guide to the Gold Region. 
By F. P. Wierzbicki, M. D. First ed. San Francisco : Printed by 
Washington Bartlett, 1849, pp. 60. The preface is dated September 
30, 1849. The book is the first English volume printed in California. 



302 CALIFORNIA. 

vices so far known to Wierzbicki are condemned, espec- 
ially, of course, those numberless and useless washers 
that new-comers brought, and so promptly left in the 
rubbish heaps of San Francisco. The result as to the 
value and limits of mining partnerships is very simply 
and practically stated (page 36) : " However, according 
to circumstances, these partnerships are formed, it can 
only be said that there is no occasion for more than four 
persons in a company, and frequently three or two do 
better than four. For protection and occasional service 
that one may require from another, it is always better 
to be in partnership with a suitable person or persons." 
On page 45 and page 46, Wierzbicki mentions mean- 
while in a casual way, and as an understood fact, the 
general good order and peace of the mines. But he 
shows us also on what changing stuff this good order 
depended. The " silent consent of all " generally is 
enough to insure a miner his rights to his " claim " ; 
lynch law has been sometimes needed and used for mur- 
derers and robbers ; but improvised judges and juries 
have seen the thing carefully done. The miners easily 
settle their own disputes about the use of land ; their 
justice is prompt and efficacious. The population, how- 
ever, " is constantly fluctuating ; " and so any perma- 
nent jurisdictions seem to the writer incapable of estab- 
lishment at present. One sees the outcome of all this. 
The miners rove about in what seems on the whole 
peace ; there is no seriously exacting government in 
Israel ; every man does what is right in his own eyes, 
subject to a simple and easily improvised popular justice. 
Large partnerships and extended social alliances are, 
however, entangling and useless. Responsibilities must 
be avoided by one who wants success. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 803 

The immediate result of this system, as applied in 
1849, was, however, on the whole, remarkably free 
from serious public mishap. Many causes combined to 
postpone this year the evil results. The great numbers 
and high character of the new-comers are in part re- 
sponsible for this. The great numbers led to vast ex- 
tensions of the field of work, and rendered the risks of 
intercommunication among the various camps less no- 
ticeable than in the previous year. By virtue of sheer 
mass, the community meanwhile forced upon itself a de- 
gree of hastily improvised organization that was in- 
tended by no one individual, but that was necessary for 
the purpose of feeding and otherwise supplying so many 
people. The numerous new commercial towns that 
sprang up in the valley regions, offered fresh chances 
to disappointed miners, and checked both their discon- 
tent, and their desire to wander off alone. Thus the 
whole life was, for the time, far healthier than the life 
that Brooks saw. 1 

Bayard Taylor, who traveled through the country as 
" Tribune " correspondent in 1849, 2 and who saw much 
of the mines, is an observer sufficiently optimistic to suit 
the most enthusiastic. He came at just the moment of 

1 A suggestion as to the chronology of the early settlements belongs 
here. The American, the Cosumnes, and the Moquelumne Rivers 
were the sites of the early mining settlements of 1848, and here the 
greatest activity of 1849 also went on. By 1850 the large camps had 
extended northward as far as the North Fork of the Feather, and into 
Mariposa County on the South. The next year saw much activity as 
far north as Shasta. Prospectors were of course always in advance of 
the larger camps. 

2 Bayard Taylor left San Francisco, to return to the East, just after 
the fire of December 24, 1849. See El Dorado (Household edition), p. 
316. 



304 CALIFORNIA. 

his life 1 to appreciate the young community. He was 
himself young, ardent, and in love ; he had come to 
California to see great things, and he certainly saw 
them. There is no question of his general accuracy in 
telling what he really saw, and he has the power that 
so few of our unimaginative nation have, to describe 
scenes, people, and things, instead of itemized and arbi- 
trary abstractions of a numerical or technical character. 
Still, we must understand his mood ; he saw whatever 
illustrated life, hope, vigor, courage, prosperity. It was 
not his business to see sorrow or misery. He saw, for 
instance, but one drunken man in all the mines. 2 Oth- 
ers at the same time had a less cheerful experience in 
this respect. Mr. Theodore T. Johnson, for instance, 8 
who was of a more melancholy turn of mind, " frequently 
saw miners lying in the dust helpless with intoxication," 
and we need no such evidence to convince us of what we 
well know a priori. Taylor's optimism, however, is not 
without its high value for us ; for he shows us what the 
better spirit of 1849 really was, despite all its so fatal 
carelessness. " In all the large digging districts," we 
learn (p. 101), " there were established regulations, 
which were faithfully observed. . . . There was as much 
security to life and property as in any part of the Union, 
and as small a proportion of crime." This he knew 
partly from hearsay ; although as to hearsay evidence, 
he was indeed a little uncritical, since, just after narrat- 

1 See his Biography, by Mrs. Taylor and Mr. H. E. Scudder (Bos- 
ton, 1885), vol. i. chap. vii. 

2 El Dorado, p. 312. People drink far too much, thinks Taylor, 
but somehow they do not get drunk in California. This was a not un- 
common boast of early Californians ; but nobody makes it in Califor- 
nia now. 

3 See his Sights in the Gold Region, and Scenes by the Way, New 
York, 1849, p. 182. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 305 

ing on such evidence the attempted expulsion by Ameri- 
cans of the " ten thousand " Sonoran miners at work in 
the southern mines, — an attempted expulsion that he 
supposed to have been fairly successful, though it was 
not, — he goes on at once to assure us (p. 103), that 
" abundance of gold does not always beget a grasping 
and avaricious spirit," and even adds that " the principles 
of hospitality were as faithfully observed in the rude tents 
of the diggers, as they could be by the thrifty farmers 
of the North and West," and, finally, that "the cosmo- 
politan cast of society in California, resulting from the 
commingling of so many races and the primitive mode 
of life, gave a character of good-fellowship to all its 
members." All this he tells us, not by way of irony 
about the recent hospitality and. good-fellowship shown 
to the ten thousand Sonorans, but because he could 
" safely say," as he expresses it, " that I never met with 
such unvarying kindness from comparative strangers." 

But, allowing for all the youthful optimism, Taylor's 
testimony is good evidence for the peace and hospitality 
that he directly experienced or heard of from trustworthy 
people, and his experience was large and varied. He 
found, at the beginning of winter (p. 263) the camps in 
the " dry diggings " well organized, each one with " an 
alcalde chosen, and regulations established as near as 
possible in accordance with the existing laws of the 
country." The alcaldes had very great powers, but were 
well obeyed. " Nothing in California seemed more mi- 
raculous to me than this spontaneous evolution of social 
order from the worst elements of anarchy. It was a 
lesson worth even more than the gold." In his general 
summary (in chapter xxx.) of the social condition of 
California, Taylor finds gambling and extravagance very 
20 



806 CAl IFORNIA, 

prevalent, and, together with the excessive drinking of 

those people who never got drunk, he considers ti- 
the great evils of the Land. But the simpler virtues 
seemed to him cheap and easy in California. Gener- 
osity, hospitality, democratic freedom from all social 
prejudices, energy, ardor, mirthfulness, industry : all he 
found alike prevalent. As he saw the easy work of the 
constitutional convention, ami took part in the prepa- 
rations for the subsequent election, public spirit also 
seemed to him a common virtue of Californians. The 

signs of the too general lack o\' it came near to the sur- 
face of his experience sometimes; but those he never 
saw. On p. 252 he tells us of the scene on the Lower 
Bar of the Moquelumne, at the first state election, in 
November, L849. "The election day dawned wet and 
cheerlessly*" Until noon the miners lav dozing idly in 
their tents, unable to work, and. very careless about the 
dignity of the occasion. At last the voting began in the 
largest of the tents, " the inspectors being seated behind 
the counter, in close proximity to the classes and bottles, 
the calls for which were quite as frequent as the votes." 
This was indeed harmless enough for the moment, and 
the ignorance of most of the miners about the men voted 

for was natural. But more characteristic was the spirit 
in which men voted. One o\ the candidates lost twenty- 
three votes for bavins;- been seen recently electioneering 
in the mines in a high-crowned silk hat. Some people 
voted oulv (ov known candidates. But many chose 
otherwise, a representative man o( them saying) in justi- 
fication : " When 1 left home. 1 was determined to go it 
blind. .1 went it blind in coming to California, and 1 'm 

not going to stop now. 1 voted for the constitution, and 
I 've never seen the constitution. 1 voted for all the 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 807 

candidates, and I don't know a damned one of them. 
I'm going it blind all through. T am." This follow was 
only too decidedly a typo of a largo class. And such 
was the birthday of the now State in the mountains. 

In short, 1849 was a year of successful impromptu 
camp-organizations, and of general external peace ; but 
it was as full of the elements of future confusion as it 
was of the strength and courage that would in time 
Conquer this confusion. The roving habits of that year 
long remained injurious elements in the more exacting 
civilization of Later years. And even the memory of 
the easy social successes of those days often proved de- 
moralizing to the later communities, by begetting an im- 
patience of all legal delays and mistakes. If we want, 
however, really to understand the forces of early Cali- 
fornia life, we must study the year 1851, a year which. 
despite the traditions oi the pioneers, is of far more his- 
torical interest than 1849. The latter is the year of the 
making of the constitution, and that is its groat histori- 
cal merit: but. for the mass of the population, it is also 
the year of vague airy hopes, of noble but untried social 
and moral promise, of blindness, of absurd blunders. 
and in general of fatal self-confidence and selfishness. 
Its one poetical aspect, the fervor of innocent, youthful, 
romantic hope and aspiration among its better men. is 
something as brief as the " posy of a ring." 1840 is, 
in short, the boyish year of California. L851, on the 
contrary, is the manly year, the year of clearer self-con- 
sciousness, of lost illusions, of bitter struggles, of tried 
heroism, of great crimes and blunders indeed, and of 
great calamities, but also of the salvation of the new 
State. It saw the truly sad and significant days of our 
early life, and we should honor it accordingly. 



308 CALIFORNIA. 

A series of changes in the methods of work, a series 
which began already in 1849, which continued through 

1850, and which reached a first culmination early in 

1851, was destined to render far more stable and respon- 
sible this roving mining life of 1849. The work done by 
the rocker might be made more effective by enlarged 
appliances, and especially by increasing the amount of 
water used in washing. Thus, after several improved 
rockers had been tried with varying success, the Long 
Tom (widely used in 1850), and, a little later, that finely 
simple invention, the board sluice, separately and to- 
gether first modified, and then revolutionized, the whole 
business of placer-mining. 1 Elaborate descriptions be- 
long not here. In its typical form, however, a sluice is 
a very long shallow box, which may extend to many 
hundreds of feet, so inclined as to give a stream of water 
flowing through it a very good headway in the box, 
especially perhaps in the upper end. Along the bottom 
of the sluice, as it originally was made, were fastened 
low cleats of wood or " riffles," " at long intervals " (so 

1 The first number of the Sacramento Transcript that appeared as a 
steamer edition on April 26, 1850 (see 2d vol. of the Harvard College 
Library Transcript file), contains on a single page an interesting series 
of letters from the various mining districts, which furnish a survey of 
the state of work at the moment. The torn is mentioned as in use at 
Auburn, but is not otherwise mentioned. During the summer it be- 
came more common. The second steamer Transcript, May 29, 1850, 
discusses mining "machinery" at length, mentioning only the vari- 
ous improvements of the rocker, with devices for the use of quicksil- 
ver. As late as the Daily Transcript of October 19, 1850, I find the 
rocker the chief instrument mentioned in reports from the mines, al- 
though the torn is known. Not until May 2, 1851, however, do I find 
in this paper an account of " sluice-washing" as a new and profitable 
process. It then rapidly grew in favor, and the torn became an aux- 
iliary or wholly subordinate instrument. The northern mines took 
up new devices more rapidly than the southern. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 309 

runs the description in the " Transcript," loc. cit.). Later 
the riffles were better arranged with special regard for 
durability and for convenience in removing them to 
" clean up." The gold particles will be caught and will 
settle just above the riffles. To the sluice a constant and 
swift stream of water must be supplied through an arti- 
ficial channel, from a reservoir, or from some point where 
it is convenient to tap a natural stream. This free sup- 
ply of running water is the essential element of sluice- 
mining. The sluice thus provided by one's side, one 
shovels the paying-gravels into it from one's claim, and 
so the earth is carried down to the " tailings," an as- 
sistant removing the larger stones meanwhile. One con- 
tinues this process steadily for days, or even weeks, and 
then upon " cleaning up " one expects to find the gold 
particles, mingled with a little black sand, collected 
above the riffles. 1 As for the " torn," in its earlier 
forms, it was simply a kind of very short sluice, pro- 
vided with a strainer for catching large stones, and 
supplied with water by hand. 

The introduction of the sluice, with its various auxil- 
iaries, not only secured the productiveness of California 
placer mines for many years, but it acted indirectly on 
society, as a check to the confusion and disorder that 
began to grow among the miners in 1850 and 1851. 
Although the early camps were more orderly than those 
of 1851, they were so, as we shall see, only because the 
demoralizing influences of a roving and hazardous, irre- 
sponsible life had not yet begun to work their full 

1 It is impossible to give any extended list of authorities on this 
topic, and needless to. Cf. Hittell's Resources, p. 307 (6th ed.)i Ca- 
pron, California (Boston, 1854), p. 208 ; Auger, Voyage en Calif omie, 
p. 107, for views of various periods. 



310 CALIFORNIA. 

effects. The disorders of 1851 and later years could 
be checked, and were checked, because they occurred in 
communities that now had vested interests. As so often 
happens in social matters, the effects here began to show 
themselves when the causes were already in decline ; 
and some of the camps of 1851 reaped the whirlwind 
that the wanderers of 1849 had sown. But sluice- 
mining meant serious responsibilities of many sorts, and 
so, in the end, good order. For, in the first place, men 
now had to work less independently, and more in large 
companies. And water became a thing that could no 
longer be taken as it came, but that must be brought in 
a steady stream to the right place, often by much labor ; 
and thus it acquired a market value, so much per " min- 
er's inch." To supply it in the dry Sierra valleys be- 
came a distinct branch of industry. It might be needed 
to wash gravels found high up on hill-sides ; and, in 
order to get it there, men must build great wooden aque- 
ducts, or " flumes," from far up the mountain streams, 
so as to let the water run, of its own impulse, to the 
needed place. The flumes often crossed wide valleys ; 
they were themselves the outcome of months of labor, 
and employed in time many millions of capital. In 
various improved shapes they have remained essential 
to the mining industry ever since. 

Nor was this the only direction in which gravel-min- 
ing increased its organization, and proved its power to 
make a possible basis for the social life of a civilized 
community. River-bed mining, undertaken on a small 
scale early, and on a large scale but with general dis- 
aster in 1850, was, in 1851 and later, a great and fruit- 
ful industry. 1 It constituted one of the boldest and 
1 The vast river-bed operations of 1850, both in the northern and in 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 311 

most dramatic of the miner's great fights with fortune. 
He had to organize his little army of laborers, to risk 
everything, to toil nearly through the summer for the 
hope of a few weeks at most of hard-earned harvest at 
the end ; and often, at the very moment when victory 
seemed nearest, an early rain swept everything away, 
and left absolutely no return. In this type of mining, 
whose operations have been very frequently described, 
the object was to turn the course of some one of the 
greater mountain-streams, by means of a dam and a 
canal or flume. The bed would thus be left bare, per- 
haps for miles, while the flume carried along the whole 
body of the stream, whose impulse was meanwhile used 
to turn water wheels in the flume, and so to pump from 
the stream-bed the surplus water that still interfered 
with active operations. 1 

To get all this ready was a slow and difficult opera- 
tion. The mountain torrent, winding, cliff-bound and 
swift, was no easy prey to catch and tame. One had 
first to wait long for its fall before beginning work. 
When, after months of toil, the thing was done, nobody 
knew what was to be found in the river-gravels until 
mining had gone on for some time. Meanwhile nothing 

the southern mines, are reviewed in the newspapers of that autumn. 
See in particular, for the early undertakings of 1849, Wierzbicki, p. 
41 and p. 46 ; and, for the operations of 1850, the Sacramento Tran- 
script of September 30 and October 8, 1850. The causes of failure in 
1850 were inexperience in doing the mechanical work, a frequent 
bad choice of situations, and the early, though light rains of that 
autumn. In 1851 the dry weather continued till nearly the end of 
the 3 r ear and success was very general. 

1 Borth wick's Three Years in California, contains in a plate, op- 
posite p. 208, an original sketch of an early river-bed mining scene. 
Numerous others may be found in California books. Dredging the 
rivers was early dreamed of, but of course never succeeded in produ- 
cing gold. 



312 CALIFORNIA. 

is more whimsical than the beginning- f the California 
rainy season. The first great black clouds, and the first 
Steady, warm southwester, may come already in Sep- 
tember, although then the showers are apt to pass by in 
a night. -November is yet more likely to hear the moan- 
ing of the first long autumn storm. But there are years 
that pass away altogether before the serious work of 
winter begins, and so leave to the following January 
and February the honors of the first " clouds and flow- 
ers," and keep even through December still the weari- 
ness of the "dust and sky." This uncertainty, which 
in later years has so embittered the lives of farmers, 
was in the early days significant, although with a differ- 
ence, for the river-bed miners. The great rains would 
at last fall, and, unless good warning had been given 
and taken, not only the dams would burst (as for that 
matter they must then in any case soon burst), but 
the flumes, with all their works, would go plunging 
in fragments down the newly -born brown torrents. 
And so these last weeks oi gold-harvesting and of dan- 
ger to all the capital invested were weeks of feverish 
toil and anxiety. Yet on such food some of the wealth- 
iest camps for a time subsisted. And the work taxed 
all the energies of hundreds of men. 

Without giving further space to descriptions of min- 
ing by sinking shafts (or M coyote-holes," as the miners 
of 1850 and 1851 called them), and without dwelling 
upon the beginnings of quartz mining and of hydraulic 
mining, we must return to our main topic. It was nec- 
essary for us thus to examine a little the physical side 
of the mining industry in order to appreciate the growth 
of the social life. The passage from lonely pan wash- 
ing to the vast operations of the flume companies, of 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 313 

the river-bed miners, and later of the hydraulic miners 
and of the quartz mining companies, did not remove 
from mining its dangerous character, either considered 
as an investment for capital, or viewed as a basis for a 
sound social order. But, at all events, men found in 
the advance of the industry to its more complex forms, 
in the formation of the necessary great partnerships, 
and in the organization of labor, the thing that all men 
need, namely, something to give a sense of mutual du- 
ties, and of common risks. The irresponsible freedom 
of the gay youth who had crowded the ships from the 
Eastern States must in all this toil be sadly limited. 
They had condemned themselves to one of the hardest 
and often bitterest of lives. But, at all events, they 
were now bound to build a society. Even while they 
organized their private schemes their camp became a 
town, and themselves townsmen. 

V. THE SPIRIT OF THE MINERS' JUSTICE OP 1851 AND 
1852: THE MINERS ON THEIR OWN LAW. 

We have seen how the mining camp, from the first 
moments of its existence, was easily organized so as to 
seem a rudely but for some time effectively governed 
little state. The business of government, as we have 
also seen, was limited to keeping the public peace from 
grosser disturbances, to punishing theft and murder, 
and to settling disputes about the use of land for mining 
purposes. The miners meanwhile commonly had a feel- 
ing that purely " private disputes," that is, those that 
did not violently and directly assail the public peace in 
a general way, were not properly the concern of the 
community. 1 This was, to be sure, a fatally mistaken 
i Cf. Mr. Shinn's Mining Camps, p. 126. 



314 CALIFORNIA. 

notion, and could not be consistently carried out. But 
the effort to carry it out, by ignoring so far as possible 
processes for debt, and by paying little attention to 
gamblers' quarrels, and to like displays of violence, 
must soon demoralize any growing community. 

However, we have to consider the young mining 
town as it was, and to ask what Avas the consciousness 
that, after the first months of entirely primitive good 
order, isolation, and effective self-government had 
passed away, the miners themselves had retained, while 
they still continued to apply to criminals this rude and 
primitive camp code. Did they suppose themselves to 
be still really and justly free from any immediate exter- 
nal authority ? Were they conscious of their camp as of 
a properly independent community, having a right to its 
own laws ? Did they retain this consciousness after 
submission to the state courts was possible ? Or did 
they, on the contrary, feel their improvised code to be 
simply lynch law, the assertion of an unauthorized inde- 
pendence, and so an actual rebellion against the estab- 
lished and properly sovereign laws of the land, a rebel- 
lion only excused by the necessity of the moment ? 
This question, comparatively insignificant in 1848 and 
1849, becomes of much greater interest as soon as the 
new State was born. 

To this question Mr. Shinn has answered, in his "Min- 
ing Camps," on the basis of his various authorities, that 
the miners' organization was normally not only efficient 
for its purposes, but also wholly in earnest in its work 
(p. 175), and that the miners' justice, notwithstanding its 
occasional lapses, was " in every important particular " 
sharply contrasted with lynch law (p. 230). Mr. Shinn 
draws at some length the contrast between miners' law 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 31*5 

and lynch law. Lynch law, as we now know it, through 
certain too familiar newspaper items from a number of 
rural districts in our South and West, is sudden in its 
action, creates no true precedents, keeps no records, 
shuns the light, conceals the names of its ministers, is 
generally carried out in the night by a perfectly tran- 
sient mob, expresses only popular passion, and is in fine 
essentially disorderly. Miners' law was open in its 
methods, liked regularity of procedure, gave the accused 
a fair chance to defend himself, was carried out in 
broad daylight, and by men publicly chosen ; and when 
state and county organizations were sufficiently devel- 
oped to take its place, it gladly resigned its sceptre to 
the regular officers of the law. 

This is the strongest possible statement on the side of 
those who maintain the satisfactory character of the 
miners' code for the simple social purposes that it un- 
dertook to attain. I am very anxious to do this view 
proper justice. That, for awhile, in new and orderly 
camps, the law of the miners' meetings was in spirit as 
effective in its way as a regular code, and that those 
who supported it hoped in time to bring it into due sub- 
ordination to the state law, I readily admit. But un- 
fortunately, camps were many, their primitive mood of 
perfect good order was brief, and the typical mining 
town of 1851 and later years had passed into a transi- 
tion stage, where it was nominally in connection with 
organized state authorities, and was actually desirous of 
managing its own affairs in its own old way. To this 
state of affairs, Mr. Shinn's account applies with great 
difficulty. After 1849, all camps were nominally under 
the state government. New camps were still often for 
a little time practically quite isolated, but ere long 



316 CALIFORNIA. 

state organization would, at least in name, overtake 
them. According to Mr. Shinn, the miners' meeting, 
or the council, or the alcalde, or whatever governed the 
new camp, would be a conscious preparation for this 
coming of the regular law. As soon as the organized 
legal machinery became in any sense more than a name, 
the orderly instinct of the miners would counsel imme- 
diate submission, and they would voluntarily abandon or 
subordinate their organization in its old forms to these 
new ones. Until the state organization came, the min- 
ers, however, would be conscious of their rightful inde- 
pendence. But, much as this theory of Mr. Shinn's 
impressed me on a first reading, the direct evidence 
shows that after 1849 the miners, even in newly-organ- 
ized districts, were apt to regard their camp law, espe- 
cially the criminal part of it, as a necessary but lawless 
device for forcing a general peace. Their contemporary 
accounts of it differ from their accounts of their land- 
laws. These latter they regard as furnishing the only 
just and truly legal method of dealing with mining 
rights. They resist strenuously any legislative interfer- 
ence with their local self-government in these matters. 
They insist absolutely upon the autonomy of the miners' 
district, as regards the land ; and for years, against all 
legislative schemes at home, and all congressional prop- 
ositions at Washington, they actually maintained this 
autonomy. But their independence in matters of crim- 
inal law was brief, and, so far as I know, was seldom, 
almost never, defended at the time on any such theoret- 
ical grounds as Mr. Shinn's ; but was defended solely as 
being the last resort of isolated communities, and was 
confessedly, in a strict sense, lynch law. 

For this reason, after concrete cases of violent popu- 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 317 

lar justice in the mines, we find the community, in 
speaking of the affair, generally more or less on the de- 
fensive. To 1849 this statement applies in but very 
small measure, since the camps of 1849 were, on the 
whole, free from any very notable general disturbances 
of which any contemporary record is known to me ; 
and were in any case out of relation to higher authority. 
But in 1850, and still more in 1851, when the popular 
justice of the mines is dealing with really serious compli- 
cations, one finds this feeling of the need of special jus- 
tification of each such act, as a lawless but inevitable 
deed, very prevalent. Of the sharp line of demarcation 
between lynch law and miners' law the miners themselves 
are thus seen to be, at the time, largely unconscious. 

It would be easy to show all this clearly enough by 
means of citations from those contemporary books of 
travel 1 whose authors are not seriously hostile to the 
miners' justice. Bat on travelers' accounts, or on other 
books, we need not depend. The newspaper of the time 
is the best source of information about the spirit of the 
people. The California newspapers of 1850, 1851, and 
1852 generally defend miners' justice ; but they show 
us two things, first that the miners' justice was not 
usually sharply distinguished from mob law, even in the 
minds of those concerned in it ; and secondly that, in 
the concrete instances of the use of miners' justice, we 
can discover all possible gradations, from the most 
formal, calm, and judicial behavior of a healthy young 
camp, driven by momentary necessity to defend itself 
against outrage, down to the most abominable exhibitions 
of brutal popular passion, or even of private vengeance. 

1 See in particular Capron, History of California, Boston, 1854, p. 
228 ; Delano, Life on the Plains, etc., chapter xxv. ; Borthwick, 
Three Years in California, p. 223, sqq. 



ais ca n . i 

. . Miwn i-ouicuijvu.in newspaper comments on the 

pQpulM tiibnu.iU .uv not I i !.m;>- ltn-\ 

UK J t.uiU .. iv\- VUc .wis of those ivimlar t.nbuu.ils. 

. u ROt l Hiir.i > u\ni>l\ unjus;. . -. .- | .■...;11\ dofondod \ 

inn ii».i\ a "' without mq • isaaosath«( thcg 

. definite. . ; noiio '- derolopmoni, 

Off MN the " Woi I 

\:\w . .-uul stolol^ on the ground that the extreme n< 

.iCn>s the lUiibutst. ;uul lh.it mimus' just... l.i 

montnble noeosait^ Fhns, in the " Eta 

• . . . . .-: I J 12, '*> I 

\ u v i amnion vv-i I ei mini m n 

on I K - • ( • ■ s ^ defaults eon 

.<>.. iul luou^lit b;u-k 1»\ Ins follow* J 

I GNU ■ i -■ • 

I t'uul th. • . 1 1 imonts ; *• i 

(4 .:.'<. v. ^ justu .i.lduui-;':. v, . •.'.■...\ 

doom lynch Uwi .*....■. .... j . . . .. 

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819 

l I'nul siwll iK'KmiiKtn .ilnu<s( . 1 1 x> ,i > . i,v,' : mu iil; .1 ,-,mi 

ilu 1 bQtWQ©n l>-:','.ll.;i 1.1W .liul Ull'.KM:.' 1.1U III 1 1 1 

tiot, as appears from this evidence) the minora da 
manded of the regular courts more iii.ui that the\i 
should be known to exist rhe minora demanded that 
these courts should bo judged efficient b) the verj men 
who, as »-in on i roated them undei the constitution, bo 
fore the oitixena oould be palled upon to but render aq} 
authoi >i> to iiuMu. Aiui u minora ohoae to declare i 
oourt Inefficient, thoj foil -it anj time free to supersede 
u b\ their own ■■■'.. tribunals, And then thejj 

defended those tribunate) not m normal means oi pun 
[shins orimo, but m abnormal neoeasitie 

rims, in a letter dated Coloma, Mai r>and published 
in the •■ [ransoript" of Maj 12, is.»i. persona >n w.> 
aign themselves ■' rhe Miners" give an "authentic 

anient of a recent outburst oi popular indignation 
near that plaoe An honest oiti an, as it seems, had 
Lost from bis wagon some paokages oi flour and butter, 
and til*' goods wore traced) apparently i>\ soattered 
Bour, "from near the wagon bo the oabin of Jones and 
partners" and identified i»v the owner, When these 
faots were made known) the "company present " chose 
i "jury of twelve men, together with one presiding 
officer, who ooolfy and deliberately proceeded to invest! 
gate the facts of the ease," giving "Jones and his part 
mors " i fair ohanoe, rhe prisoners wore found guilty 
i-\ the jury, ami t lu^ "company present) numbering 
about ;; . ooncurred bji nnanimous vote in the verdict 
rhen thej considered what d> Ao. The district was the 
oldest in the mines, since it wasin that district that 
Marshall had first found gold i and ti>« v oourti wore 
wA\ established, Many of the orowd were disposed 



320 CALIFORNIA. 

accordingly to hand over the prisoners to the officers at 
Coloma. But ere they had set out for the town, other 
voices were heard. " To deliver the prisoners to the 
civil authorities would be tantamount to an acquittal 
of them, and would do no good, further than to help fill 
the pockets of officers and lawyers." So it was said, 
and they " resolved to settle the matter without delay." 
The prisoners were hereupon treated very leniently, 
being ordered to refund the value of the property stolen, 
and to leave the district before the next morning, or else 
to be whipped and then banished, in case they sought to 
stay. Lenient the offer was, though not strictly in ac- 
cordance with the Bill of Rights. The prisoners, be- 
ing given the choice, elected to leave un-whipped, or at 
least said so. But, possibly remembering the Bill of 
Rights, they concluded upon reflection to go about their 
business as usual, and " neglected to leave." Where- 
upon twenty or twenty-five persons, hearing of this con- 
tempt of court, hunted up Jones the next day, "and 
were proceeding to a suitable place to inflict the punish- 
ment, when the sheriff and his subs interfered in behalf 
of the law," promised to keep the prisoner safe, and 
"induced " the mob to give him up. " He was accord- 
ingly committed to jail, and tried next day before Jus- 
tice Brooks. And notwithstanding the plain, pointed, 
irresistible, and unquestionable evidence of the guilt of 
the prisoner, he was informed by the court that the 
charges against him were not sufficient for conviction ; 
and no doubt Mr. Jones now thinks that he is at perfect 
liberty to steal any and everything he can, provided he 
can be tried by the so termed courts of justice." Such 
is the "authentic statement" of the miners. But their 
comments are interesting, because they illustrate just the 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 321 

sense of a conflict between miners' justice and the regular 
law which was so common in those days. " Would it be 
less," continue the signers of the letter, " than the de- 
serts of such officers as these, if they had to receive the 
dues of Jones as their own, in every case where they 
let the guilty go unpunished ? We have the following 
to say in reference to our position in this neighborhood, 
as it regards lynch law : we are to a man opposed to 
any such law, and we believe there is no part of Califor- 
nia in which the citizens would be more submissive to 
the civil authorities than ourselves, could the laws as 
designed by our legislature be executed faithfully. But 
when we call on the civil authorities for redress, we are 
repulsed. Indeed, sirs, we would not be surprised if the 
present administrators of the law in this part of the 
country should make the whole community a mob. . . . 
So long as this evil exists to the extent that it now does, 
we will find our citizens looking to themselves for pro- 
tection." 

But we need not depend on any one newspaper. In 
the " San Francisco Herald " for April 4, 1852, 1 is a 
letter from a " special correspondent," plainly a resident, 
at Moquelumne Hill, a prominent camp in the southern 
mines. A Vigilance Committee had been formed there 
for about two months. Since its formation there had 
occurred but one murder. "The strong current of 
crime " which had theretofore swept " everything before 
it," and which the regular courts had never checked, 
had been checked by the committee, and order had be- 
gun to reign on the Hill. Some weeks had passed 
without disturbance, " and it was supposed that the 
committee were no longer on the lookout." But alas ! 
this tale of prosperous peace was a short one. 
1 Harvard College Library file. 



322 CALIFORNIA. 

" A number of robberies have, within the last ten 
days, been committed." " Scarcely a night has passed 
for some time but something has been stolen, or some 
man robbed." At last, after one Perkins had been 
robbed of forty-five ounces, a Sonoran, by name Carlos, 
was found on a tent floor, apparently drunk. The tent, 
as was seen, had just been cut open, Carlos had no busi- 
ness there, and seemed too drunk to explain his errand. 
He staggered off, but was soon discovered to be sober 
enough indeed, was arrested by the committee, was 
found to have gold specimens in his possession that 
Perkins could identify as a part of the lately stolen 
gold, and was at last induced to confess himself one of 
the recent thieves. So " the committee deliberated what 
should be done with him. It was thought that if he was 
handed over to the city authorities, he might perhaps 
be committed to Jackson jail ; where, if he remained 
twenty-four hours, it would be because he liked the ac- 
commodations, and had no fear of being convicted." 
To flog and release him was thought equally useless, 
since the committee knew his previous reputation, and 
despaired of reforming him. " If hung, there would be 
one thief less," and one warning more. So the com- 
mittee resolved to hang him. Carlos made no objection, 
but asked only for a good supper, a priest, and a glass 
of brandy. The committee cheerfully complied with 
his requests, and, after having received such religious 
and other consolation as his poor soul desired, Carlos 
slept well all night, walked coolly to his gallows the next 
morning, and cheerfully helped about his own execution. 
So much for the case. 1 The comments are thoroughly 
characteristic. 

1 The main facts are confirmed by the account in the San Fran- 
cisco Aha, for April 5, 1852, steamer edition. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 323 

" It is much to be deplored," says the correspondent, 
" that necessity should exist for such extreme measures. 
This execution will doubtless be condemned by many in 
California, and by more in the old States. The sickly 
sentimentalist will hold up his hands in horror ; the 
officers of the law will be found loud in their indigna- 
tion at what they will call a ruthless, illegal deed ; the 
ermined judge who sits secure in his seat at a salary of 
thousands per year will be indignant that the people 
should presume to take any measures to protect their 
own life and property and punish offenders without 
their [sic] aid and sanction ; but those who live in well- 
ordered communities, where they have officers who know 
their duty and dare do it, can have no idea of the situa- 
tion in which we are placed. Whose fault is it ? 

"The truth is, it has been absolutely and impera- 
tively necessary for us to protect ourselves, and, law or 
no law, it will be done. We have a Committee of Vig- 
ilance who are determined that, until a different state 
of things exist, they will not disband, but will punish in 
the most exemplary manner all and every high-handed 
offense against life and property." 

Any reader is struck by the force of this plea, and 
he fully agrees that, like "Jones and partners " at Co- 
loma, Carlos may have been as verily a dog as the 
report makes him. But with Jones and Carlos, in these 
cases, we have little concern. Our interest is chiefly 
with the honest men themselves, and with their unhappy 
state. The reader must have observed the curiously ex- 
ternal point of view that the writers of the two letters 
just cited adopt, as they discuss their own society. 
"People cannot understand our woes," they patheti- 
cally insist. " We have lawyers, judges, sheriffs, pris- 



324 CALIFORNIA, 

ons, but, alas ! no justice, unless we fight for it our- 
selves, treating our own law-officers as aliens, and be- 
coming a mob. Oh, the depravity of those courts and 
of those lawyers ! " But, as we are tempted to retort : 
Whose gold, now hoarded by the pound in insecure 
tents, the prey of every vagabond, might have contrib- 
uted to build a strong jail at Coloma or at Jackson ? 
Or, perhaps, was it not of a truth felt unnecessary to 
build a strong jail — unnecessary just because one 
chose in one's heart, meanwhile, to think ropes a little 
cheaper than bricks, and, for the purpose, just as 
strong ? Nay, is all the " sickly sentimentalism," or all 
the cant, on one side in this matter ? Who whines 
perpetually and tediously, all through these early days, 
about " necessity," and " the first law of nature," and 
the defects of the social order, and all his gloomy so- 
cial afflictions ; even while, in fact, his whole purpose 
is to store his gold dust, to enjoy his private fun, and 
then to shake off the viler dust of the country from his 
feet as soon as possible ? Who but the poor outraged 
miner himself, whom necessity, if not manhood, will 
ultimately compel to apply himself to his duty and to 
stop his whining ? 

Nothing is capable of clearer demonstration from 
contemporary documents than the color of the sentiments 
of a community, in case one can find the very words of 
a representative people. The details of transactions it 
is harder to state accurately. In passing from the 
motives of the miners' popular justice to its methods 
and more characteristic incidents, we shall be much at 
the mercy of our witnesses. Yet of this the reader 
may be assured. What we have here further to narrate 
about miners' justice will rest, as far as possible, like 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 325 

the foregoing, on contemporary evidence. For what a 
pioneer can say, after many years, about the incidents 
of a given affair is worth little or nothing in compari- 
son with any fairly objective contemporary evidence, 
unless, indeed, the pioneer in question was himself di- 
rectly concerned in the very incidents that he relates. 
And for our purposes just here, no vague generalizations 
about the early justice will serve such as are so familiar 
in the later books and essays, by romancers and pio- 
neers, on those early days. We must go afresh to the 
sources. 

VI. MINERS' JUSTICE IN ACTION. — CHARACTERISTIC 
SCENES AND INCIDENTS. 

All gradations, we have said, can be found in the 
popular justice of the mines, from the most orderly 
and wisely conducted expression of outraged popular 
sentiment which is in any way possible outside of the 
forms of law, down to the most brutal and disgraceful 
outbursts of mob fury. I wish that the latter class of 
incidents had been rarer than one actually finds them. 
But the day for either vindicating or condemning by a 
labored argument the pioneer life as a whole has long 
since passed. The true vindication of those days — 
their only possible vindication — is the great and pro- 
gressive State that grew up upon that soil, and that 
thenceforth was destined to do for our land a very real 
service. But, after all, neither to vindicate nor to con- 
demn the whole community is our desire ; we want, for 
the sake of our own instruction in political duties, to 
study the various individual events and tendencies that 
determined social life, and to let our praise or our blame 
fall upon them. 



326 CALIFORNIA. 

The more regular and orderly popular justice of the 
mines took place especially in the newer and more iso- 
lated camps, although circumstances might bring it to 
pass almost anywhere in the mines. We find it ex- 
pressing itself often in very quaint forms, using, gener* 
ally, considerable severity, but keeping up a show of 
good-temper throughout. Where it was thus free from 
passion, its verdicts seem, at all events, to have been 
generally in accordance with the facts, whatever we 
may say of the wisdom of its sentences. 

A study of the lynching affairs thus directly from the 
sources seems to me to throw a wholly new light upon 
the character of which they were the too frequent ex- 
pression. Many of the popular legends about lynching 
that have influenced the more modern and romantic 
tales of the early days distort very curiously the true 
motives of the miners. A mining camp is presented to 
us in such stories as a community that always especially 
delighted in its lynching parties, and that went about 
them with all the jovial ferocity of young tigers at play. 
But when the lynching affair was once begun, then, as 
the story-tellers will have it, the popular court was easily 
moved by purely sentimental considerations. A timely 
offer of drinks, a good joke, or, far better still, an ingen- 
ious display of ruggedly pathetic eloquence, might suffice 
to turn the court aside from its dangerous undertakings. 
The whole affair was a kind of great and grim joke, 
and sentimentalism could always take the place of the 
joking mood, and, if it did so, might save the prisoner. 
In the dramatic presentation of such scenes many writers 
have amused themselves. Thus the lynching affair, 
even if tragic in outcome, is, throughout, enlivened, ac- 
cording to these accounts, by absurdly conventional 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 327 

humor ; and often, when the outcome is to be less terri- 
ble, the tragedy is averted by conventional eloquence. 
To take a very recent instance of such story-telling, I 
read, not long since, in the " Overland Monthly," a 
pretended sketch of an early lynching scene, in which 
the prisoner's life is at length saved by the ingenuity of 
his volunteer defender, an old man whose reputation 
for veracity stands very high in the camp where this 
scene is supposed to take place. This veracious de- 
fender, namely, who has never before seen the prisoner, 
concludes to save the latter's life by making an excep- 
tion in his favor, and lying about him. The prisoner's 
face is pock-marked, and the defender accordingly 
makes up, on the spur of the moment, a long story 
about how this poor wretch once nursed a very un- 
friendly man, well known to the defender himself, 
through an attack of small-pox, and so caught the in- 
fection. The defender's tale is made as harrowing as 
possible. Its effect is electric. The prisoner stands 
accused of a very serious crime and the evidence 
against him is strong ; but all is forthwith forgotten. 
Judge Lynch offers him tobacco, gives him a drink, 
and sets him at liberty, on the ground that so saintly a 
man as one who volunteers to be a small-pox nurse 
under very harrowing circumstances is at liberty to do 
a little occasional mischief in those diggings without 
question. 

Now, such sentimentalism as this is utterly foreign to 
the typical miners' lynching affair, whether orderly or 
not. The typical lynching occurred, indeed, in a com- 
munity of Americans, where everybody was by habit 
disposed to joke in public and seem as cheerful as he 
could, and to listen to all sorts of eloquence ; but the 



328 CALIFORNIA. 

affair itself was no expression of this formal joviality, 
nor yet of this submissiveness to oratorical leadership. 
It proceeded from a mood of utter revulsion against the 
accustomed good-humor of the camp. It was regarded 
as a matter of stern, merciless, business necessity. It 
was unconscious of any jocular character. Disorderly 
lynching affairs in some few cases, do, indeed, appear 
to have been mere drunken frolics. But nearly all, 
even of the disorderly affairs, and that, too, where their 
cruelty was most manifest, had in them no element of 
the merely jocular. They expressed an often barbarous 
fury ; but they pretended to be deeds of necessity, and 
a sentimental speech in a prisoner's favor would have 
done nothing save, possibly, to endanger the prisoner's 
life yet more, or even to endanger that of his advocate. 
No one understands the genuine lynching who does not 
see in it a stern laying aside of all these characteristic 
American traits of good-humor and of oratorical senti- 
mentalism themselves, for the sake of satisfying a mo- 
mentary popular passion, aroused against the forces of 
disorder. Just because the miner was accustomed to 
be so tolerant and easy-going, these moments of the out- 
burst of popular fury found him, whether orderly or 
not, in all typical cases, merciless, deaf to all pathetic 
appeals, unconscious of anything save the immediate 
public necessity. What element of comedy remained 
in some of these affairs was generally an unconscious 
element. 

And so, while not all the lynching scenes are equally 
tragic, a large class of them is doubtless well typified by 
the following very gloomy tragedy, which suggests, if 
one wants to reflect upon it, a world of horror behind 
the scenes. This is, namely, a trial for murder, occur- 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 329 

ring in 1851, at Shasta, then the centre of a newer min- 
ing region. I use the report communicated from Shasta 
to the " Sacramento Transcript " of April 3, 1851, and 
give the details at some length just because the affair is 
so characteristic. 

At Oak Bottom, about ten miles from Shasta, there 
lived, in March of that year, two partners, 1 Easterbrook 
and Price, who had come from the lower mining region 
together, a few months before, leaving on their way a 
third partner, disabled by poison oak, at Grass Valley. 
The two had left families at home in the East, and were 
come to California to win fortunes for them, Easter- 
brook, in particular, expecting, like so many others, to 
raise the mortgage from his farm. Nobody seems to 
have questioned their respectability, or their mutual 
friendship. One evening in March, the two went 
together to the " residence of Mr. Isaac Roop," as it is 
called in the report. This was next door, in fact, to 
their own tent, and was a " residence " where one drank 
" ardent spirits," as the report in its exact way calls the 
drink there found, where one also played cards, and 
where one had to pay a bill at the end of the evening. 
As the hours went by, Easterbrook, whom nobody seems 
to have accused afterwards of being an habitual drunk- 
ard, grew a little excited and quarrelsome, and after 
some minor difficulty with a third person, he found 
himself refused more liquor by the cautious Mr. Isaac 
Roop. Thereupon Easterbrook called for his bill, and 
began to quarrel over the amount of it. Price, mean- 
while, had gone to their tent near by, and had lain down 

1 I give real names only to guaranty the accuracy of my report. 
After so many years there is little danger that the persons will be 
recognized. 



330 CALIFORNIA. 

on his blanket, whether drunken himself or no, does 
not appear. At all events, hearing Easterbrook's voice, 
he called out, as Easterbrook at last proceeded to pay 
his score : " Don't be paying out other people's money." 
Easterbrook started at the insult, rushed back to the 
tent in fury, cursing, and told his partner to prepare for 
death. Price had been only joking, and was not moved 
by the threat. "Lay down" he was heard to say 
quietly, " lay down and go to sleep." An eye-witness 
saw, by whatever dim light there was, that Easterbrook 
dragged out a gun from under some baggage. In an 
instant one heard a report, and Easterbrook himself was 
fleeing from the tent into the night. When the by- 
standers, who at once pursued, had caught him in a 
little time, he said, apparently with the air of one wak- 
ing : " Have I shot Price ? " And when they said that 
he had, he replied : " Do as you please with me ; it was 
an accident, and I was drunk." Price lay gasping ; he 
never spoke again, and died in about an hour. 

The next day Easterbrook was brought, guarded, 
down to Shasta, over the ten miles of new miners' road. 
There, just after midday dinner, a meeting of the citi- 
zens was called. Perfect decorum prevailed ; a ghastly 
air of ordinary and business-like propriety pervades the 
stifiry written report. There were doubtless lawyers 
present. The assembled people first chose a chairman 
and secretary, and then a committee of three, to select 
a trial jury of twelve men '* to try the cause before the 
people." They also passed a resolution summoning the 
witnesses, and guarantying to the accused a fair and 
impartial trial ; and they then appointed an officer " to 
carry into effect the verdict of the jury, and summons 
to his aid as many persons as might be necessary to re- 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 331 

lease or execute the prisoner." The chairman swore in 
the jury, and called the witnesses ; and now at length 
the story of the homicide was heard. The prisoner was 
thereafter asked what he had to say in defense. He 
replied briefly, but not without some natural and terrible 
pathos. He had been in the mines only since the 29th 
of the last July. Never, before this one time, had he 
in all his life " had words " with any man. Never had 
he " done anything to cause a blush." Standing now 
as one on the verge of the grave, he could declare in 
God's name that he felt in his mind "guiltless of any 
premeditated intention to kill Mr. Price." (" Mr." has 
its sadly formal ring as applied to the dead partner at 
this moment.) Mr. Price was a " good man." The 
prisoner had never had any feeling against him. And 
Price had left " a wife, and a daughter who is now mar- 
ried." But, as for the prisoner himself, " I have a wife 
and three children. The eldest is nine years of age. 
My circumstances are such, that, should I leave the 
world, my wife and children will be penniless. I have 
a farm which is incumbered, and without my return 
will be sacrificed. It is not for myself, but my wife 
and children that I plead. Taking my life would not 
bring to life Mr. Price. It would only make one more 
widow, and three more orphans, and on their account 
only do I plead for mercy, as any of you would, were 
you in the same unfortunate condition." 

This defense seems to have been noted down by the 
secretary of the meeting, for the newspaper report is 
very formally worded, and is called official. There 
were no other arguments heard on either side, the jury 
feelino- no need of further advice. Shasta was not a 
place for tears, nor for pity ; and the jury, after a brief 



332 CALIFORNIA. 

consultation, brought in a written verdict, signed by each 
one, declaring Easterbrook guilty of murder in the first 
degree, and sentencing him to " be punished immediately 
by hanging by the neck until he is dead." The meeting 
had convened at two o'clock. It was now after four. 
The prisoner was given about an hour to set his affairs 
in order, and was hanged between five and six. — The 
" Transcript " editor regards this as a truly wonderful 
case, finds in it a fine spirit of law and order, and calls 
it " an exhibition of the power of the American mind 
over that which we have heretofore known as mob law." 
The reason for this exceptional and benevolent mood 
on the editor's part is a recent occurrence in Sacramento 
itself, the " Roe " lynching, which had for the moment 
made popular justice seem to him of vast importance. 
Usually, as we have seen, he was less enthusiastic. 

I know not whether the story of the " Outcasts of 
Poker Flat " was founded, as report has declared, upon 
some oral tradition that reached the author years later, 
of a real incident of early times. If so, then the real 
incident itself may have been the expulsion from this 
same town of Shasta, in August, 1851, of all the so-called 
"suspicious" characters of the town, "seven men and 
two women." * A " hay yard " had been burned down, 
and report made the act the work of an incendiary. 
All suspicious characters were at once ordered out of 
town; "they complied," and passed down towards a 
brook called " Whiskey Creek." Now as these nine 
went by the way, they met, oddly enough, coming down 
from Oak Bottom, our friend Mr. Isaac Roop himself, 
at whose " residence " the two partners had passed the 
fatal evening some five months before. I know not 
1 Alta California of August 20, 1851. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 333 

what general disgust with respectable gentlemen who 
had " residences " to leave when out for their airings, 
or what feeling of recklessness it was, that moved these 
nine ; but one of them hereupon shot at Mr. Hoop. 
Were this only a book of fiction, they would have killed 
him, by way of ending the story well. But this is his- 
tory, and one is bound to say that, according to the re- 
port here cited, they missed Mr. Roop altogether, who 
went his way, probably with more than his accustomed 
quickness, into Shasta, and told what they had done. 
Whereupon the miners of that town sent out an armed 
party, who very firmly and leniently escorted the nine 
southward to the border of the county, with the intent 
of sending them thence into banishment ; and of their 
fate, and of Mr. Hoop's, in subsequent days, I know 
nothing. This then must suffice as concerning the jus- 
tice of the people of Shasta in 1851. — • Here, at least, 
there was no trace of the sentimental or the jocular. 

Our next case is less gloomy than Easterbrook's, and 
takes place later, and in a less severely primitive locality. 
It is a case of larceny this time. In the " San Fran- 
cisco Herald " of March 22, 1852, I find a report, ap- 
parently officially furnished by mail to this and other 
papers, of a miners' meeting at Johnson's Bar, where 
one " Dr. Bardt," whose title is very considerately 
preserved throughout the report, was arraigned for 
theft. 1 

" The meeting having been called to order, Mr. Camp- 
bell was appointed chairman, and Cyrus Hurd, Jr., sec- 
retary. 

1 The comedy of this scene, be it noticed, lies not in the conscious 
behavior of the miners, who were as business-like and merciless as 
the judges of Easterbrook, but in our point of view as spectators. 



834 CALIFORNIA. 

" On motion, it was resolved, that Dr. A. Bardt be 
whipped for the said thefts. 

" On motion, it was resolved that Dr. Bardt should 
receive thirty-nine lashes on the bare back and leave 
the mines in three days. 

" It was moved and seconded that Dr. Bardt should 
be cropped. The motion, on being put, was negatived 
unanimously. 

" On motion, it was resolved that Dr. Bardt be whipped 
by the constable, Mr. Thompson, with a rope. 

" On motion, it was resolved that the constable should 
proceed immediately to the discharge of his duty. 

" On motion it was resolved that the secretary be re- 
quested to furnish a copy of the proceedings to be pub- 
lished in the California papers. 

" The punishment having been inflicted, it was, on 
motion, resolved that the meeting do adjourn sine die." 

Since the thefts are spoken of as the " said thefts," 
one is disposed to compare this case to the above cited 
Coloma case of "Jones and partners," and to suppose 
that " Dr. Bardt " had tried to set a previous verdict at 
naught. 

Severe, unsentimental, and in the sharpest contrast 
to their daily joviality, was the mood of the lynching 
miners as we have so far examined it. The cause of 
this contrast we have also begun to see. The miners' 
justice, however, even where the evidence was clear, 
and the trial orderly, was often not merely severe, but 
atrociously cruel. In the " Transcript " for January 30, 
1851, one finds the record of a trial at Mississippi Bar, 
where a thief, " in consideration of his youth," was not 
hanged, but was given one hundred and fifty lashes, and 
a brand "R" on the left arm, after having his head 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 335 

shaved on one side. One is surprised to find how people 
who at home, in those philanthropic days, would very- 
likely have been under the sway of sentimentalists, and 
would have shuddered at severe penalties of all sorts, 
now behaved when they were away from home. For 
the change their own sense of irresponsibility is largely 
to blame, the same sense of irresponsibility that led them 
to tolerate the causes which led to these social disasters. 

The two punishments, flogging and death, as penal- 
ties for theft, have invited much comment from critics 
of early California mining life. It is too obvious to need 
much special discussion here, that to flog and banish a 
thief from a given camp was to do worse than nothing 
for the good order of the mines at large. The thief 
went out into the mountains a very poor, desperate, and 
revengeful man. He had, meanwhile, all the vague 
chances ahead that were offered to him by a possible 
entrance as a stranger into some new camp. Hope in 
any cheerful sense these chances would hardly give him ; 
but, in his despair, they would promise him that, in the 
new place, he might possibly avenge, on people who did 
not know him, the blows that he had suffered from those 
who had found him out. Or again, the sight of the 
lonely mountain roads might offer to his despair the 
proper suggestion for a new life of crime. In any case, 
the camp that banished him had only, as Capron's in- 
formants put it, 1 " let loose a fiend." And the friendly 
interchange of their respective fiends among the various 
camps was obviously the whole outcome of this prevail- 
ing system of flogging and banishment. 

Those miners who chose to hang the notorious thieves 
of their camps were therefore, so far as the direct effec- 
1 Capron's History, loc. cit. 



336 CALIFORNIA. 

tiveness of their work was concerned, wiser, since they 
got rid of at least one rogue. A dead thief steals no 
more ; and as we have above shown, this book has no 
sort of sentimentalism to expend over dead thieves, 
although, for other reasons, this plan of lynching thieves 
was a bad one. Where the miners' courts were orderly, 
careful, sensible in examining evidence, and certain of 
the habitual and intolerable roguery of the thief before 
them, it was far better, under the circumstances, to hang 
than to flog and banish him, and less cruel, also. Never- 
theless, the real objection to the habitual hanging of the 
thieves by the people, as practiced in those days, is none 
the less cogent. We have already suggested where this 
true objection lay. The thief himself, as an individual, 
was indeed often enough a worthless hound, and deserved 
all that he got. As against the interests of society at 
large, his interests were naught. But it was precisely 
the interest of society that was in the long run most in- 
jured by the habit of hanging the thieves in these rude, 
irregular miners' courts. For the popular conscience 
was debased by the physical brutality of the business, 
and so soon as the lynching habit was once established, 
this conscience was put to sleep by a false self-confi- 
dence, engendered of the ease wherewith justice seemed 
in such cases to be vindicated. And society, which, with 
all its fancied honesty, was, in its own way, an obvious 
accomplice of the thief himself, was prevented for a while 
from appreciating the enormity of its offenses. For it 
was society that encouraged these rogues, and that, with 
every month, made them worse rogues than ever. By 
its careless spirit, by its patronage of gambling saloons, 
by its jolly toleration of all private quarrels that did 
not go ^so far as once for all to enrage the public, by its 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 337 

willful determination to spend no time on self-discipline, 
and no money on so costly a thing as a stable public 
order, and, above all, by its persistently wicked neglect 
to choose good public officers, the mining society made 
itself the friend and upholder of the very roguery that 
it flogged and hanged. Its habitual good-humor insured 
the necessity of occasional fury and brutality. And, so 
long as it flogged and hanged in this rude popular way, 
it could not be convinced of its errors, but ever and anon, 
after one of these popular outbursts of vengeance, it 
raised its blood-stained hands in holy horror at crime, 
lamenting the fate that would doubtless force it still in 
future to continue its old business of encouraging this 
bloodshed. All this criticism of mine may be merely 
moral commonplace ; but I am sure that I should never 
fill these pages with such platitudes, were it not for the 
outrageous effrontery with which the average mining 
community of those days used to defend itself, in the 
fashion cited above. The single act was indeed often in 
itself defensible. It was the habit of risking such emer- 
gencies that was intolerable. 

So far did this trust in hanging as a cure for theft go, 
that in the second legislature, that of 1851, an act was 
passed making hanging for grand larceny a penalty to 
be thenceforth regularly imposed at the pleasure of the 
convicting jury. 1 So easy is it for men to sanction their 
blunders by the help of a little printers' ink, used for 
the publication of a statute. 

1 I am somewhat perplexed to find Mr. Shinn, Mining Camps, p. 
228, note, referring this law to the first year of the life of the State, 
and to the legislature of 1850. The matter is one of plain record, 
and is of some importance, because it shows that the law did not first 
encourage the lynchers, but that only after the extravagances of pop- 
ular justice had for some time flourished, it was found possible to load 
22 



338 CALIFORNIA. 

The familiar reply of the pioneers to all these criti- 
cisms is, that if the miners' justice reformed nobody, it at 
least effectually intimidated every rascal. And much 
nonsense has been repeated by writers on those early 
days concerning the terrible magnitude and swiftness, 
the certainty, the simplicity, and the consequent deter- 
ring effect of lynch law. But one who repeats this non- 
sense forgets first of all that axiom of criminal justice 
according to which the magnitude and the frightfulness 
of a penalty are of but the smallest deterring power in 
comparison with the certainty of the penalty ; and such 
an one also forgets that mob law can never be certain. 
While a vigilance committee in the mines was in full 
course of vengeance, crime would indeed be terrified. 
But at the very instant the committee relaxed its vigi- 
lance, the carelessly open tents, the gold, the scattered 
wanderers prospecting in the hills, or finding their way 
along the roads, all suggested to the thief his old 
chances. And what had he, after all, to fear ? No 
vigilant police, no conscientious public spirit, no strong 
jails. Only a momentary and terrible outburst of pop- 
ular justice was, at the worst, to be dreaded. If he 
escaped that, by flight, or by even temporary conceal- 

the statute book with an entirely useless and demoralizing penalty, 
useless because its uncertainty made it of no deterring power, and 
demoralizing because all useless and obsolete penalties are mere 
opportunities for whimsical popular vengeance, not expressions of 
the dignity of the social order. The best possible comment on this law 
is a case where a thief was tried under it at Monterey, as reported in 
the San Francisco Herald for June 26, 1852. The jury brought in 
a verdict finding the prisoner guilty as charged, sentencing him to 
death, but recommending him to the mercy of the court. The court 
was puzzled ; but as the prisoner was a native Californian, the jury 
got the benefit of the doubt, and the prisoner was formally sentenced 
to death. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 339 

ment of his crime, there would be no detectives to hunt 
him down, no permanently accessible evidence to be 
produced against him. No witness would be public- 
spirited enough to wait an hour longer than might be 
convenient for a chance to testify. In a few weeks the 
witnesses who could hurt him might be scattered far 
away, and the whole thing forgotten. Under such cir- 
cumstances, could the bare chance of even one hundred 
and fifty lashes with a branding, or even the possibility 
of being hanged, deter a rogue from his work? The 
analogy of the case of England at the close of the last 
century, with the ineffectiveness of the capriciously ex- 
ecuted death penalty as there ordained for lesser of- 
fenses, at once suggests itself. Criminals, like savages, 
scatter to their hiding-places after any sudden defeat ; 
but they are not thereby civilized, and constant vigilance 
is needed as much after their defeat as before. And 
when the vigilance committees scattered the rogues of a 
given camp, the result was very like the one that takes 
place when a lonesome wanderer in Californian wilder- 
nesses scatters the coyotes that have gathered at night 
around his camp-fire. The coyote loves to hold parlia- 
ment, in such a case, just beyond the circles of the fire- 
light, for the benefit of the poor wretch who, rolled up 
in his blankets, is trying to rest from his labors beside 
his fire. With unearthly noises the vile beasts drive 
away from him sleep, for a prostrate and almost motion- 
less man, all alone, the coyote regards as a deeply ad- 
mirable object. And the man occasionally starts up, 
perchance, and dashes out into the dark with ineffective 
ravings, while the whole pack vanish yelping in the 
night. But, alas, when he returns to his fire and lies 
down, the gleaming eyes are soon again near, and he 



340 CALIFORNIA. 

has nothing to do but to curse away the hours until 
dawn, helpless against his tormentors as Gulliver bound 
in Lilliput. As any one can see by a chronological study 
cf the newspapers of 1851 and 1852, just such was the 
experience of many camps with their rogues. Of un- 
hanged rogues a community rids itself only by ceasing 
to nourish them ; while, if you nourish rogues, you can- 
not hope to hang them all, nor yet to hang the most 
of them. 1 

A chronological study of the newspaper files, I say, 
proves this inefficacy of mere lynching, in so far as such 
a study can of itself make any social tendency clear. 
In the spring of 1851, in fact, and also far into the sum- 
mer of that year, one finds much lynching going on. 
That autumn there seems indeed to be once more gen- 
eral peace and good order in the mines ; but for this not 

1 The reader should compare here again Mr. Shinn's discussion of 
our whole topic, and the instances that he cites. He has often failed 
to give his sources, and he seems to me one-sided in the choice of 
facts ; but his is the only effort published before the present one to 
discuss systematically the whole subject of popular justice in Cali- 
fornia, and his view is much more favorable than mine. For further 
instances of moderately orderly popular procedure in the mines, I 
must content myself here with referring to the San Francisco Alia of 
1851 (Harvard College Library file), in the numbers for May 21 
(where a horse-thief at Nevada was allowed by the "crowd " to choose, 
himself, who should give him the thirty-nine lashes); July 11 (where 
a Sonora correspondent describes the caution with which a vigilance 
committee proceeded in trying a Mexican horse-thief, who was given 
a whole day in which to prepare his case and produce his witnesses, 
and who was then convicted and flogged, a collection being afterwards 
taken up for his benefit); and October 22 (where the passengers on a 
Marysville steamboat tried and convicted in regular miners' form 
one of their number who had committed a theft on board, and sen- 
tenced him to pay a large fine in gold dust to a sick and destitute man 
who chanced also to be on board). All these incidents are character- 
istic. 



TEE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 341 

merely past popular violence must be held responsible, 
but many other influences as well. The dry season 
continued until late, and vast river-bed operations, great 
tunnels, flumes, dams, ditches, were occupying men's at- 
tention. Labor was organized as never before in the 
mines. The vested interests of the various communi- 
ties were great and increasing ; the yield was large, but 
the responsibility serious. At such a moment the com- 
munity was on its good behavior. Moreover (and this 
is a deeply significant fact), the violence of the spring 
and summer had reacted on the honest men even more 
than on thieves. The need of vindicating lynching, a 
need that these people almost always felt, showed that 
they were capable of being shocked by their own deeds 
of popular vengeance. For, after all, these honest men 
had very often been well brought up at home, and were 
still new to bloodshed. In their lives the lynching af- 
fairs were, despite their recent frequency, still terrible 
and wholly exceptional events. And so they may be 
fairly presumed to have taken, for a while at least, the 
ordinary precautions of decent citizens. They did not 
so easily tolerate minor disorders, nor by their good- 
humor encourage ruffians to live in their camps. Prob- 
ably they gambled less frequently themselves, drank 
less, acted more soberly. To these causes, quite as much 
as to the temporary fright of the rascals, must we at- 
tribute the comparative good order of that autumn. Yet 
the rascals were neither dead nor gone from the State, 
nor reformed, though many of them had left the mines. 
Just after two horse-thieves had been sentenced to death 
under the new law at Stockton, the " Stockton Journal " 
of about October 25, 1851, 1 " again complains," as the 
1 Quoted in the San Francisco Alta for October 27. 



342 CALIFORNIA. 

" Alta " says, " of the increase of crime and rowdyism 
at that place." The complaint asserts that disorder 
prevails to a lamentable extent in Stockton, that " every 
day is marked with some scene of violence ; and the 
night becomes frightful, from the hideous iniquities per- 
petrated under the shadow of its obscurity." " All 
quiet," continues the " Stockton Journal," " is banished 
from the place, for no citizen feels safe, unless he is 
armed for any emergency. Might is the only protec- 
tion a man can claim in these perilous times." Now 
these words are a trifle passionate and rhetorical ; but 
they have no doubt a very real foundation. Some of 
the banished rogues had gone to Stockton, although that 
city had not been unaffected by the general popular 
struggle for order in the summer of 1851. These 
wretches had found the moment favorable in that city, 
and the sentence of death just legally passed on the 
two horse-thieves had not awed them into submission. 
Yet this was in the comparatively peaceful closing sea- 
son of the great year of popular justice, which was in- 
deed a valuable year, yet not, in general, because of its 
violence, but because of its organization of labor. 

To see the utter transiency of the effects of brute 
violence, as a suppressor of crime, we must, however 
look onwards to the newspapers of 1852. Surely, if 
mere warning by frequent lynchings were enough, the 
warning of 1851, with the constant readiness of the 
people to follow it up, on occasion, by new lynchings, 
ought to have produced a reign of peace in the mines, 
lasting longer than through the autumn and winter fol- 
lowing. But consider the facts. We have already seen 
how, in the spring of 1852, things went on at Moque- 
lumne Hill. I have before me in a file a number of 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 343 

the steamer " Alta " of June 15, 1852. This number 
has an astonishing catalogue of crimes, reported from 
the mining regions both north and south, together with 
lynchings ; and the editor declares that, were he to 
give all the particulars to be gathered from his mining 
exchanges of one day, he could fill a number of his own 
daily edition. And then he adds a significant quota- 
tion from an interior paper of the southern mines. 
" The ' Calaveras Chronicle,' " he says, " complains of 
the alarming increase of crime in that section within 
the past few weeks. The grand jury have found ten 
indictments. 'Summary examples' (i. e., lynching ex- 
amples), says the ' Chronicle,' ' for capital and minor 
offenses have been frequently made ; but the canaille 
would scarcely lose sight of the scaffold, the tremor 
which a malefactor in the agony of death cast through 
their frame would scarcely have ceased, until they 
caused the public ear again to be greeted with intelli- 
gence of more outrages, more robberies, more assassi- 
nations." As for the state of the mining public in that 
part of the country at the moment, it appears, from sev- 
eral items in that number of the steamer " Alta," that 
a " Mexican " at Jackson, having been accused, without 
any evidence of which an intelligible account can be 
given, of being the murderer of two Frenchmen who had 
been slain in their tents near there, was brought before 
a drunken justice of the peace, and was by him com- 
mitted to prison ; and that the " crowd " thereupon, 
without giving him a fair chance to be heard further in 
his own defense, took him from jail and hanged him, 
after a desperate struggle, in the presence of his plead- 
ing mother and sisters. Now this affair, which is very 
confusedly reported, and which, of course, may have 



344 CALIFORNIA. 

been distorted in the telling, sufficiently indicates, at all 
events, that the lynching habit was as demoralizing as it 
was useless. 1 

VH. A TYPICAL HISTORY OF A MINING CAMP IN 

1851-52. 

More orderly expressions of popular justice, of the 
sort heretofore frequently recorded, were impossible, as 
we now see, without results that must be far worse than 
mere mistakes. A mining town was not standing still. 
It was a growing or else a decaying organism. In al- 
ternating between universal optimistic good-humor on 
the one hand, and grim vengeance upon wrong-doers on 
the other, it was, however, either stunting its true 
growth, or dooming itself to decay and corruption. 
Fortune has preserved to us from the pen of a very in- 
telligent woman, who writes under an assumed name, 
a marvelously skillful and undoubtedly truthful history 
of a mining community during a brief period, first of 
cheerful prosperity, and then of decay and disorder. 
The wife of a physician, and herself a well-educated 
New England woman, " Dame Shirley," as she chooses 
to call herself, was the right kind of witness to describe 
for us the social life of a mining camp from actual ex- 
perience. This she did in the form of letters written 
on the spot to her own sister, 2 and collected for publica- 

1 I have not wished to burden these pages with a complete list of the 
very numerous cases of lynching that 1 have collected from the con- 
temporary newspaper files. The foregoing cases, as far as they go, 
are to my mind typical, and I believe my choice to be a fair one. At 
all events such directly verifiable data have far more worth than the 
confused memory of the pioneers before referred to. 

2 These Shirley Letters, found all through the numbers of Ewer's 
Pioneer (published at San Francisco in 1854-55), have already been 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 345 

tion some two or three years later. Once for all, allow- 
ing for the artistic defects inevitable in a disconnected 
series of private letters, these " Shirley " letters form 
the best account of an early mining camp that is known 
to me. For our real insight into the mining life as it 
was, they are, of course, infinitely more helpful to us 
than the perverse romanticism of a thousand such tales 
as Mr. Bret Harte's, tales that, as the world knows, 
were not the result of any personal experience of really 
primitive conditions. 

" Shirley " entered the mines with her husband in 
1851, and passed the following winter, and the summer 
of 1852, at Rich Bar and Indian Bar successively, both 
of them busy camps, near together, on the North Fork 
of the Feather River. The climate agreed with her 
very well, and on the whole she seems to have endured 
the hardships of the life most cheerfully. 

Rich Bar 2 was, in September, 1851, when she first 
saw it, a town of one street, " thickly planted with about 
forty tenements ; " tents, rag and wooden houses, plank 
hovels, log cabins. One hotel there was in it, the 
" Empire." Rich Bar had had, in its early days, a great 

once cited. Of their authenticity we are assured by the editor. The 
internal evidence is to the same effect. " Dame Shirley's " interest is 
not at all our particular one here; and she is quite unconscious of the 
far-reaching moral and social significance of much that she describes. 
Many of the incidents introduced are such as imagination could of 
itself never suggest, in such an order and connection. There is no 
mark of any conscious seeking for dramatic effect. The moods that 
the writer expresses indicate no remote purpose, but are the simple 
embodiment of the thoughts of a sensitive mind, interested deeply in 
the wealth of new experiences. The letters are charmingly unsenti- 
mental; the style is sometimes a little stiff and provincial, but is on 
the whole very readable. The real name of the author, according to 
Poole's Index, is Mrs. L. A. C. Clapp. 
1 Pioneer, vol. i. p. 221. 



346 CALIFORNIA. 

reputation for its wealth, insomuch that during its first 
summer, it had suddenly made wealthy, then converted 
into drunken gamblers, and so utterly ruined, several 
hundred miners, all by giving them occasional returns 
of some hundreds of dollars to the panful. It had now 
entered into a second stage of more modestly prosperous 
and more steadily laborious life ; it was a very orderly 
place, and was inhabited partly by American, partly by 
foreign miners. Some of the latter were South Ameri- 
cans. " Shirley " on her arrival found herself one of 
five women on the bar ; and was of course very pleas- 
antly and respectfully treated by those miners whom 
she had occasion to know. 1 

In the "Empire," the only two-story building in 
town, built originally as a gamblers' palace, but, by 
reason of the temporary industry and sobriety of the 
Bar, now converted into a very quiet hotel, " Shirley " 
found temporary lodgings. The hotel office was " fitted 
up with that eternal crimson calico, which flushes the 
whole social life of the ' Golden State ' with its ever- 
lasting red." 2 In this room there was a bar, and a 
shop of miners' clothing and groceries. The " parlor " 

1 The popular stories of absurd displays of sentimentality by early 
miners who chanced to be reminded of home through the sight of a 
woman or of a child never find much corroboration from the state- 
ments of women who were actually in the mines at the time. Most 
women were of course uncommonly well treated by the whole commu- 
nity, and any man's services would have been instantly and gladly 
at their disposal in case of any need. They were met with even effu- 
sive politeness ; but miners were not such fools as the story-tellers like 
to make them. " Shirley," soon after her arrival, was greeted in her 
husband's office by one of his friends, who insisted on making her 
sip champagne on the spot at this friend's own expense, in honor of 
his first sight of a woman for two years. But Shirley did not hear 
that any one ever danced about a woman's cast-off bonnet or petticoat. 

2 Pioneer, vol. i. p. 174. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 347 

was behind this room, on the first floor : a room straw- 
carpeted, and furnished with a big mirror, a red-seated 
" sofa, fourteen feet long," a " round table with a green 
cloth, red calico curtains, a cooking-stove, a rocking- 
chair, and a woman and a baby, the latter wearing 
a scarlet frock to match the sofa and curtains." Up- 
stairs were several bedrooms, with immense, heavy bed- 
steads, warped and uneven floors, purple calico linings 
on the walls, and red calico curtains. The whole house 
was very roughly and awkwardly pieced together by a 
careless carpenter, and cost its builders eight theusand 
dollars. It was the great pride and ornament of the 
camp. 

The landlord was a Western farmer, his wife yellow- 
complexioned and care-worn. The baby, six months 
old, kicked and cried in a champagne-basket cradle. 
The woman cooked for all the boarders herself. Of the 
four women who besides " Shirley " were in town, an- 
other kept with her husband the " Miners' Home " and 
" tended bar." Within about a week after " Shirley " 
came, a third of the four, whom she had not met, died, 
and " Shirley " attended the funeral, 1 which took place 
from a log cabin. This dwelling was windowless, but 
with one large opening in the wall to admit light. The 
funeral scene was characteristic of the social condition of 
the moment. Everything about the place was " exceed- 
ingly clean and neat " for the occasion. " On a board, 
supported by two butter-tubs, was extended the body of 
the dead woman, covered with a sheet ; by its side 
stood the coffin of unstained pine, lined with white cam- 
bric. . . . The husband held in his arms a sickly babe 
ten months old, which was moaning piteously for its 
1 Pioneer, vol. i. p. 347. 



348 CALIFORNIA. 

mother. The other child, a handsome, bold-looking 
little girl, six years of age, was running gayly around 
the room, perfectly unconscious of her bereavement." 
Every few moments she would " run up to her dead 
mother, and peep laughingly under the handkerchief." 
" It was evident that her baby-toilet had been made by 
men ; she had on a new calico dress, which, having no 
tucks in it, trailed to the floor," giving her a " dwarf- 
womanly appearance." After a long and wandering 
impromptu prayer by somebody, a prayer which " Shir- 
ley " found disagreeable (since she herself was a church- 
woman, and missed the burial service), the procession, 
containing twenty men and three women, set out for the 
hill-side graveyard, " a dark cloth cover, borrowed from 
a neighboring monte table," being " flung over the cof- 
fin," as a pall. It was the best pall B.ich Bar could 
have furnished for anybody. The coffin-lid was nailed 
down, as there were no screws, the sharp hammer blows 
on the hollow coffin shocking the solemn little assembly 
with their uncanny noise. " Shirley " tried, a few days 
later, to amuse the little motherless girl, who was then 
about to leave the camp with her father for Marysville, 
and offered her a few playthings. The little one chose 
with ecstatic delight some tiny scent-bottles, which she 
called " baby-decanters." 

Among the miners, perfect good-humor prevailed on 
the Bar. On the anniversary of Chilian independence, 
Yankee miners walked fraternally in procession with 
the Chilians, every member of the procession " intensely 
drunk," l . and yet there seems to have been no quarrel- 
ing. The people on the Bar used profane language to 
an unpleasant extent on the commonest occasions ; but 
1 Pioneer, vol. i. p. 274. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 349 

they were well-meaning about it, and called it only a 
" slip of the tongue." " Shirley," as woman of cultiva- 
tion and curiosity, took a friendly interest in their less 
disagreeable manners and customs, and especially in their 
rich, and to her at that moment very novel, slang. She 
recorded with amusement how they ended a discussion 
upon business questions with : " Talk enough when 
horses fight," or " Talk enough between gentlemen ; " 
how they assured themselves of one's sincerity by ques- 
tioning : " Honest Injun ? " (which she spells, with 
Yankee primness, Indian) ; and how they would ask 
one of another : " Have you a spare pick-axe about 
your clothes ? " or say that they " had got the dead- 
wood on " somebody. 1 Take them for all in all, they 
seemed to her far oftener amusing than coarse or disa- 
greeable. And many of them she plainly found delight- 
ful men, men of education no doubt, and of good social 
position at home. 

Before October had fairly begun, she had moved 
with her husband to the neighboring Indian Bar, where 
he had many personal friends. The scenery here was 
wilder ; but the society was much the same in its busy 
and peaceful joviality. Here were some twenty tents 
and cabins on the bar itself ; other houses were on the 
hill, the whole place evidently growing very fast ; and 
other inhabited bars were near. The whole region 
was full of activity ; dams, wing-dams, flumes, artificial 
ditches, were to be seen all about. " Shirley " now be- 
gan to live in her own log cabin, which she found al- 
ready hung with a gaudy chintz. The one hotel of In- 
dian Bar was near her cabin, too near, in fact ; for there 
much drinking, and music, with dancing (by men with 
1 Pioneer, vol. ii. p. 24. 



350 CALIFORNIA. 

men), went on. " Shirley " found and improvised very 
amusing furniture for her dwelling ; trunks, claret- 
cases, three-legged stools, monte-table covers, and candle- 
boxes, furnishing the materials for her ingenuity. In 
her little library she had a Bible, a prayer-book, Shake- 
speare, and Lowell's " Fable for the Critics," with two 
or three other books. The negro cook of the hotel, who 
for some time did her own cooking as well, played finely 
on the violin when he chose, and was very courteous 
to " Shirley." She speaks of him often with infinite 
amusement. Prominent in the society of the Bar was a 
trapper, of the old Fremont party, who told blood-cur- 
dling tales of Indian fights ; another character was a 
learned Quaker, who lectured at length to " Shirley " 
on literature, but never liked to listen to her on any sub- 
ject, and told her as much very frankly. The camp had 
just become possessed also of a justice of the peace, a 
benevolent looking fat man, with a big head, slightly 
bald, and a smooth fat face. He was genial and sweet- 
tempered, was commonly supposed to be incompetent, 
and had got himself elected by keeping both the coming- 
election and his candidacy a secret, save from his 
friends. Most of the miners, when they came to hear 
of him and of the election, thought such an officer a nui- 
sance in those diggings, as the camp could surely keep 
order without his help. But so long as he had nothing 
to do, he was permitted to do it, and to be as great a 
man for his pains as he liked. Late in October, one 
case of supposed theft occurred, the trial taking place at 
Rich Bar, before a miners' meeting. The " Squire " 
was allowed to look on from the platform, while the im- 
provised popular magistrate, sitting by his side, admin- 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 351 

istered justice. The thief, as " Shirley" heard, was 
lightly flogged, and was then banished. 1 

Not until December, however, was the general peace 
broken further. But then it -was indeed broken by a 
decidedly barbarous case of hanging for theft. The 
" Squire " was powerless to affect the course of events ; 
the "people" of Indian Bar, many of them drunken 
and full of disorderly desire for a frolic, tried the ac- 
cused, whose guilt was certain enough, although his pre- 
vious character had been fair ; and, when he had been 
found guilty, the " crowd " hanged him in a very brutal 
fashion. He was himself drunken to the last moment. 
The more reckless people of the Bar were the ones con- 
cerned in this affair, and all "Shirley's" own friends 
disapproved of it. 2 

General demoralization, however, set in with winter. 
There was little to do on the Bar ; the most of the men 
were young ; the confinement of the winter, on a place 
" about as large as a poor widow's potato-patch," was 
terrible to them. Christmas evening saw the beginning 
of a great revel at the hotel near " Shirley's " log-cabin. 3 
Days had been spent in preparing for it ; the bar of the 
hotel had been retrimmed with red calico ; brandy and 
champagne in vast quantities had been brought into 
camp ; and, what was most wonderful of all, the floor 
of the hotel had been washed. An oyster and cham- 
pagne supper, with toasts and songs, began the revel. 
Shirley heard dancing in the hotel as she fell asleep 
that night in her cabin ; and next morning, when she 
woke, they were still dancing. 4 The whole party now 

1 Op. cit., vol. ii. pp. 151, 214. 2 Op. cit, vol. ii. p. 351. 

8 Op. cit., vol. iii. p. 80. 

4 These "balls," attended by men only, because there were only 



352 CALIFORNIA. 

kept themselves drunken for three days, growing con- 
stantly wilder. They formed a mock vigilance committee 
to catch and bring in the few remaining sober men of 
the camp, to try them, and to condemn them to drink 
some stated quantity. Some of the wildest revelers 
were the most respected men on the river. At last 
they all reached the climax : as " Shirley " heard the 
thing described, they lay about in heaps on the floor of 
the hotel, howling, barking, and roaring. Altogether 
" Shirley " thought the letter describing this affair the 
unpleasantest of her series so far. Strange to say, no 
fights are recorded at this time. But thenceforth confu- 
sion seems to be somewhat noticeable in the social af- 
fairs of that vicinity. In March a man at a camp near 
by was stabbed in the back during a drunken frolic, 
and without any sort of cause. Yet people took at the 
time no notice of the affair. 1 In April a Mexican at 
Indian Bar asked an American for some money due the 
former. The American promptly stabbed his creditor ; 
but again nothing was done. 2 The Mexicans were in 
fact now too numerous for comfort at Indian Bar, since 
Rich Bar had just expelled all foreigners, who therefore 
now came to this place. The public houses, which now 
were noisy with gambling, drinking, and fighting, had 
increased from one to seven or eight, and on Sundays 
they were "truly horrible." But summer began with- 
out any further great outbreaks of mob violence. On 
the Fourth of July, however, the " gradually increasing 
state of bad feeling " recently shown by our country- ' 

men to attend them, were not uncommon in the mines. Borthwick, 
in his Three Years, has preserved, opposite p. 320, a sketch of one of 
them, made on the spot, and worth pages of stupid description. See 
also his excellent sketches, from life, of gambling-scenes. 

1 Op. cit., vol. iii. p. 220. 2 Loc. cit., p. 355. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 353 

men towards the foreigners, culminated, for the mo- 
ment, in a general assault, the result " of whiskey and 
patriotism," on the Spaniards near one of the saloons, of 
whom two or three were badly hurt. 1 " Shirley " con- 
fesses that, as she learns, the people of Spanish race on 
the Bar, many of whom are " highly educated gentle- 
men," are disposed to base an ill opinion of our whole 
nation on the actions of the rougher men at Indian Bar. 
" They think " [very oddly] " that it is the grand char- 
acteristic of Columbia's children to be prejudiced, opin- 
ionated, selfish, avaricious, and unjust. It is vain to 
tell them that such are not specimens of American gen- 
tlemen." Our democratic airs as shown in the mines, 
" Shirley " thinks, deceive them. They fancy that we 
must be what we choose to seem, namely, all alike. 
But the men who really so acted as so unfavorably to 
impress the foreign gentlemen were, she declares, the 
gamblers and rowdies of the camp. " The rest of the 
people are afraid of these daring, unprincipled persons, 
and when they commit the most glaring injustice against 
the Spaniards, it is generally passed unnoticed." " We 
have had," says " Shirley," wearily, " innumerable 
drunken fights during the summer, with the usual 
amount of broken heads, collar bones, stabs, etc." These 
fights usually took place on Sunday ; and not otherwise 
could " Shirley " always have been sure of remembering 
the day of rest. Things were sadly changed from those 
bright days of her early stay at the Bar. 

The vengeance of the gods, that was thus gathering 
over Indian Bar, descended with a sudden stroke on 
Sunday, July 11. " Shirley " had been walking with a 
party of friends in the beautiful summer woods ; but 

1 Op. cit., vol. iv. p. 24. 
23 



354 CALIFORNIA. 

when she returned the town was in a fury. A " majes- 
tic-looking Spaniard " had quarreled with an Irishman 
about a Mexican girl (" Shirley " for the first time, I 
think, thus showing a knowledge of the presence at In- 
dian Bar of those women who seem, in the bright and 
orderly days of her first arrival, to have been actually 
unknown in the camp). The Mexican, having at last 
stabbed and killed the other, fled to the hills ; and the 
Americans were rushing about, shouting : " Down with 
the Spaniards ! " " Don't let one of the murderous dev- 
ils remain ! " and other similarly enlightened words. 
" Shirley " was conducted by her husband for safety up 
on to the hill, and to a house where there lived a family 
containing two women. Here from above, gazing di- 
rectly down on to the Bar, she watched " a sea of heads, 
bristling with rifles, guns, and clubs." In this vast 
confusion a gun was accidentally discharged, during a 
scuffle, and two men were wounded. This recalled the 
people to their senses, and they forthwith elected a vigi- 
lance committee. They were then pacified for the day. 
But the next day the committee tried five or six 
Spaniards, " supposed to have been ringleaders in the 
drunken mob of Sunday," and sentenced two to be 
flogged, and all to be banished, their property " being 
confiscated for the use of the wounded persons." 
"Shirley" was obliged to hear, from her cabin, the 
flogging of the two men, and found it, naturally, very 
highly disagreeable. One of the two convicted men, a 
" gentlemanly young Spaniard," begged in vain to be 
killed rather than whipped, and finally swore the most 
awful vengeance on all Americans henceforth. These 
sentences of the committee were, after all, very lenient ; 
for the mob had demanded the death of the prisoners. 
Thus began the rule of the Committee of Vigilance. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 355 

Within the next week there was a murder by a ne- 
gro, and he was hanged for it at Rich Bar. Fights 
went on more wildly than before. Yet another negro 
is named, who cut his own throat and created much ex- 
citement thereby, since at first one of his fellows was 
accused of having done the deed. As for the state of 
society, " it has never been so bad," " Shirley " writes, 
two or three weeks later, " as since the appointment of a 
committee of vigilance." It was now almost impossible 
to sleep. The rowdies paraded the streets all night, howl- 
ing, worrying their enemies, and making great bonfires, 
— all the men of this crowd of roughs being constantly 
drunken. " The poor, exhausted miners . . . grumble 
and complain, but they — although far outnumbering 
the rioters — are too timid to resist. All say, ' It is 
shameful ; something ought to be done,' etc., and in the 
mean time the rioters triumph. You will wonder that 
the committee of vigilance does not interfere. It is said 
that some of that very committee are the ringleaders." 
A duel took place during this time at a neighboring bar. 
" The duelists were surrounded by a large crowd, I have 
been told, foremost among which stood the committee 
of vigilance ! " x 

— The mining operations that summer were not a 
distinguished success at Indian Bar, and in autumn there 
was what miners call a " general stampede from those 
diggings." The physician and his wife took leave of 
the mines not unwillingly. " Shirley's " health, to be 
sure, had wonderfully improved. In closing her mining 
life she notices that " the few men that have remained 
on the Bar have amused themselves by prosecuting one 
another right and left." "The 'Squire,'" she adds, 

1 For the immediately foregoing, see Pioneer, vol. iv. p. 103, sqq. 



356 CALIFORNIA. 

"comes out strong on these occasions." His recent 
course in these litigations "has been so fair, candid, 
and sensible, that he has won golden opinions from all, 
and were it not for his insufferable laziness and good- 
nature, he would have made a good justice of the 
peace." 1 This criticism applies so well, also, to all the 
honest miners of Indian Bar and vicinity (men who 
formed an undoubted majority of the community), that 
we need no better summary than these words give us of 
the life of that year on the Bar. These native Ameri- 
cans of good character would have had little real trouble 
in preserving the peace of the camp, had they not chosen, 
one and all, to show such detestable " laziness and good- 
nature." 

" Shirley's " well-sketched pictures have passed be- 
fore us, and the series is complete : easily secured peace, 
then carelessly criminal tolerance, then brutally intol- 
erant degeneracy, and then the final wretched dissolu- 
tion. There can be no doubt that the story is typical of 
the life of many camps. With " Shirley," we rejoice at 
last to leave to its triumph the majesty of the benevo- 
lent law, personified in the fat-faced squire, as it works 
to the edification of that handful of impecunious and 
litigious fellow-citizens who were forced to stay on the 
Bar. 

VIII. THE WARFARE AGAINST THE FOREIGNERS. 

We have now disposed, we hope forever, of the fa- 
miliar pioneer theory that makes the " foreign crimi- 
nals " the one great cause of the troubles of the miners. 
The rapid degeneration of the weaker young men of all 
sorts in those times has been commonly enough noticed 
1 Op. cit. } vol. iv. p. 347. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 357 

in the accounts of the mines. The foreigners, too, had 
their share in the effects of this tendency, and the 
Spanish-Americans most of all, because they were most 
abused, and least capable of resisting the moral effects 
of abuse. Many of them were also bad enough to begin 
with, and that there were great numbers of foreign rogues 
in California is, of course, certain. But for the rapid 
degeneration, both of individuals and of communities, the 
honest men were chiefly to blame, because they knew 
the danger, and neglected for a time, in the mines, 
every serious social duty. The honest men were, at the 
worst, a fair majority, and were usually an overwhelm- 
ing majority of the mining communities. Had they not 
been so, California would never have emerged from the 
struggle as soon as it did. Since they were so, it is 
useless for the survivors now to remind us of the un- 
doubtedly honorable intentions of these good miners of 
early days, and to lay all the blame elsewhere. Not 
every one that saith Lord ! Lord ! is a good citizen. 

But if the foreign criminals were not the great source 
of mischief, the honest men certainly did all that they 
could to make these foreigners such a source. The fear- 
ful blindness of the early behavior of the Americans in 
California towards foreigners is something almost unin- 
telligible. The avaricious thirst for gold among the 
Americans themselves can alone explain the corruption 
of heart that induced this blindness. Some of the ef- 
fects we have already seen. We must look yet a little 
closer at this aspect of the struggle. 

The problem of the future relations of foreigners and 
Americans in California was, at the moment of the birth 
of the State, undoubtedly perplexing. A mixed popu- 
lation of gold-seekers was obviously a thing to be feared. 



358 CALIFORNIA. 

Left to themselves, American miners, as it seemed, 
might be trusted to keep a fair order. With all sorts 
of people thronging the territory, danger might be ap- 
prehended. This problem, then, as to the future, was 
sure to trouble even the clearest heads. But, after all, 
clear heads ought quickly to have understood that this 
perplexing problem was not for any man, but, in its 
main elements, only for fortune to solve ; and that the 
work of sensible men must be limited to minimizing the 
threatening evils by caution, by industrious good citizen- 
ship, and by a conciliatory behavior. The foreigners 
could not, on the whole, be kept from coming. One 
could only choose whether one would encourage the 
better or the worse class of foreigners to come to the 
land, and whether one would seek to make those who 
came friendly and peaceable, or rebellious and desperate. 
But the California public and the first legislature chose 
to pass an act to discourage decent foreigners from vis- 
iting California, and to convert into rogues all honest 
foreigners who might have come. This was, indeed, 
not the title of the act. It was the Foreign Miners' 
Tax Law of 1850. 

Its avowed purpose was as far as possible to exclude 
foreigners from these mines, the God-given property of 
the American people. Its main provision was a tax of 
thirty dollars a month (levied by means of the sale of 
monthly licenses) upon each foreigner engaged in min- 
ing. At the time when it was passed there were al- 
ready several thousand Sonoran miners in California ; 
and, as we have also seen, there had already been diffi- 
culty with them in the southern mines, a difficulty that, 
as, we learn from Bayard Taylor, 1 passed off peaceably 

1 See also Riley's letter (Cal. Docs, of 1850, p. 788) as corrobora- 
tion. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 359 

enough at the moment, because the Sonorans would not 
fight. Taylor's mistake lay in supposing the Sonorans 
to have been seriously discouraged. In the next year 
they were more numerous than ever. So the public and 
the legislature were forewarned. The common talk 
about our national divine right to all the gold in Cali- 
fornia was detestable mock-pious cant, and we knew it. 
The right and duty that undoubtedly belonged to us 
was to build up a prosperous and peaceful community 
anywhere on our own soil. But you cannot build up a 
prosperous and peaceful community so long as you pass 
laws to oppress and torment a large resident class of the 
community. The one first duty of a state is to keep its 
own peace, and not to disturb the peace. The legisla- 
tors must have known that to pass the law was to lead 
almost inevitably to violent efforts at an evasion of its 
monstrous provisions, and was meanwhile to subject the 
foreigners to violent assaults from any American ruf- 
fians who might choose to pretend, in the wild mountain 
regions, that they were themselves the state officers. 
Violence must lead to violence, and the State would 
have done all it could to sanction the disturbances. 

Seldom is a political mistake so quickly judged by 
events. The next legislature, little wiser about many 
things than its predecessor, was still, in this matter, 
forced quickly enough to withdraw its predecessor's ab- 
surdity from the statute-books. The " Alta California " 
breathes with a sigh the general relief on hearing that 
this is done. 1 But ere it could be done, untold mischief, 

1 See the weekly Alta, in the Harvard College Library file, for 
March 15 and March 22, 1851. As appears from remarks and news 
herein contained, the repeal of the tax was, like all political action, 
the product of manifold motives. San Francisco felt bitterly, as the 
chief port of the State, the loss of commerce that the act directly and 



360 CALIFORNIA. 

which added fearfully to the sorrows of the struggle for 
order, had been caused by the unlucky act. 

No adventurer, no gambler, no thief, no cutthroat, 
who had desired to come to California from Mexico, or 
elsewhere abroad, could be prevented by a threat of tax- 
ing him thirty dollars a month for mining. Many a cau- 
tious", sober, intelligent foreigner might be warned away 
by the exorbitant tax, as well as by the hostility which 
it indicated. For, when levied not upon the uncom- 
monly lucky miner, with his two ounces or his pound a 
day, but upon the ordinary poor devil, with his ups and 
downs, whose " wages " per month were in only a very 
few months more than enough to support him at the 
prices that prevailed, and in the winter months were 
often nothing at all, the thirty-dollar tax was a mon- 
strous imposition. And when levied on men who had 
come already in 1848, and who had often felt, before 
the passage of the act, that the Americans hated them 
merely for being the more skillful miners, this tax 
was a blow that their hot spirits were sure to resent. 

Trouble came at once, and quickly culminated in the 
difficulties at Sonora, in 1850. From his sources Mr. 
Shinn has given, in chapter xviii. of the " Mining 
Camps," an account of this disturbance. 1 He regards it 

indirectly entailed. Business men, in Stockton and the southern 
mines, complained of the loss of customers. Every one, by March, 
1851, was weary of the insecurity produced by the bickerings with 
the foreigners. And, at a public meeting held (as the Alta reports) 
in Stockton, March 6, 1851, and addressed by several speakers, among 
others by one " Terry," whom I supposed to be the well-known judge 
of later years, the discussion is made to touch on the *vital national 
question of north and south. The tax law is called a scheme to de- 
press the enterprise of the southern mines, and so of the southern por- 
tion of the State, whose sectional sympathies were well known. 

1 His chief source, I suppose, is the Miners' Directory of Tuo- 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 361 

as a "case where indignation against foreigners had 
much justification." I am prepared to believe that 
whenever it is proved, but what I have been able to 
gather from the contemporary newspaper files makes me 
prefer to express the matter by calling the affair a not 
wholly unprovoked, but still disgraceful riot on the part 
of Americans. They were undoubtedly harassed by 
foreigners of the poorer sort, and a number of murders 
were committed by such, but when the Americans turned 
upon foreigners as a class, and especially upon Sonorans 
and South Americans, and tried to exclude them from 
the mines in a body, by means of mob-violence, sup- 
ported by resolutions passed at miners' meetings, the 
undertaking was a brutal outrage, and the good sense 
of decent Americans quickly rebounded, for the moment, 
from the mood that could be guilty of such behavior. 
The result was, however, meanwhile, that many foreign- 
ers were rendered desperate and were turned into dan- 
gerous rascals, and that many more were driven vio- 
lently away from the mines ; but that, nevertheless, the 
body of the foreign miners remained in the mines at 
their work, ill-humored, suspicious, and ready for the 
worst ; so that the last state of " those diggings " was far 
worse than the first. There is here no space for a dis- 
cussion of the sources bearing on this topic ; and these 
Sonoran difficulties form one of the many still almost 
unstudied topics that abound in California history, and 
that invite monographic treatment. I can give only the 
result of what I so far can make out. When, early in 
the summer of 1850, the collectors came for the foreign 

lumne County (Sonora, 1856), which he cites in his Land Laws of 
Mining Camps, and elsewhere. This pamphlet 1 have not been able 
to use. 



362 CALIFORNIA. 

miners' tax, they found the foreigners surly and suspi- 
cious, and did what was possible to make them more so. 
A number of murders were committed by " Mexicans," 
and then the American miners began to meet, and to 
pass resolutions, not against murderers, nor in favor of 
a firm organization of the regular machinery of law, 
but against foreigners. One famous set of resolutions, 
quoted in all the authorities on this affair, pronounced 
in favor of a committee of three Americans in each 
camp, to decide what foreigners were " respectable," 
and to exclude all others by a sort of executive order, 
meanwhile depriving those who remained of all arms, 
save in cases where special permits should be issued. 
One is reminded once more, by this procedure, of poor 
Ide and the " blessings of liberty." Other resolutions, 
passed in those days, and often later in various camps, 
excluded foreigners altogether, sometimes giving the 
obvious intentions of Providence as the reason for this 
brutality. There followed numerous assaults upon Mex- 
icans, and several riotous assemblages of Americans. 

It is impossible to judge how far the newspaper re- 
ports of foreign outrages in that region and time, out- 
rages such as robberies and murders committed upon 
Americans, are truthful. Any mysterious outrage was 
attributed to " Mexicans ; " any American wretch who 
chanced to find it useful could in moments of excite- 
ment divert suspicion from himself, by mentioning the 
Mexicans in general, or any particular Mexicans, as the 
authors of his crimes. And, in " those diggings," there 
were, undoubtedly, numerous Mexicans who well de- 
served hanging. But the story as told by the foreign 
population is not known to us. We can see only indi- 
rectly, through the furious and confused reports of the 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 363 

Americans themselves, how much of organized and 
coarse brutality these Mexicans suffered from the min- 
ers' meetings. The outrages committed by foreigners 
were after all, however numerous, the crimes of indi- 
viduals. Ours were the crimes of a community, con- 
sisting largely of honest but cruelly bigoted men, who 
encouraged the ruffians of their own nation to ill-treat 
the wanderers of another, to the frequent destruction of 
peace and good order. We were favored of heaven 
with the instinct of organization ; and so here we organ- 
ized brutality, and, so to speak, asked God's blessing 
upon it. The foreigners were often enough degraded 
wretches ; such drank, gambled, stole, and sometimes 
murdered : they were also, often enough, honest fel- 
lows, or even men of high character and social posi- 
tion ; and such we tried in our way to ruin. In all cases 
they were, as foreigners, unable to form their own gov- 
ernment, or to preserve their own order. And so we 
kept them in fear, and, as far as possible, in misery. 

So ill we indeed did not treat them as some nations 
would have done ; we did not massacre them wholesale, 
as Turks might have massacred them : that treatment we 
reserved for the defenseless Digger Indians, whose vil- 
lages certain among our miners used on occasion to re- 
gard as targets for rifle-practice, or to destroy wholesale 
with fire, outrage, and murder, as if they had been so 
many wasps' nests in our gardens at home. Nay, the 
foreign miners, being civilized men, generally received 
" fair trials," as we said, whenever they were accused. 
It was, however, considered safe by an average lynch- 
ing jury in those days to convict a " greaser " on very 
moderate evidence, if none better could be had. One 
could see his guilt so plainly written, we know, in his 



364 CALIFORNIA. 

ugly swarthy face, before the trial began. Therefore 
the life of a Spanish-American in the mines in the early 
days, if frequently profitable, was apt to be a little dis- 
agreeable. It served him right, of course. He had no 
business, as an alien, to come to the land that God had 
given us. And if he was a native Calif ornian, a born 
" greaser," then so much the worse for him. He was 
so much the more our born foe ; we hated his whole 
degenerate, thieving, land-owning, lazy, and discontented 
race. Some of them were now even bandits ; most of 
them by this time were, with our help, more or less 
drunkards ; and it was not our fault if they were not all 
rascals ! So they deserved no better. 

The Sonora troubles of 1850 would be less significant 
if they had expressed only a temporary mistake, and 
had given place to a proper comprehension of our duty 
to foreigners. But although the exorbitant foreign min- 
er's tax was repealed in 1851, and although, when a tax 
was reimposed later, it was of comparatively moderate 
amount, still the miners themselves were not converted 
from their error until long afterwards, and, in numerous 
individual cases, they were never converted at all. The 
violent self-assertions that from time to time were made 
of the American spirit over against the foreign element, 
accomplished absolutely no good aim, and only increased 
the bitterness on both sides, while corrupting more and 
more our own sense of justice. Instead, therefore, of 
justifying themselves as necessary acts of " self-preser- 
vation," the miners' outbreaks against foreigners only 
rendered their own lives and property less secure. Two 
years after the Sonora troubles, one finds in the summer 
of 1852 the same weary business going on in the south- 
ern mines, less imposing, no doubt, in its expressions of 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 365 

wrath, but none the less disgraceful and demoralizing. 1 
The later the year, the more certain it is that all molesta- 
tion of foreigners who had been in the peaceful posses- 
sion of claims meant simply confiscation of valuable 
property that had been acquired by hard toil. For such 
claims, in these later times, were often river-bed claims, 
or " coyote-holes," or similarly laborious enterprises. So, 
in the disturbance in July, 1852, in Mariposa, referred 
to in the foregoing note, the foreign miners, as appears 
from the report, had undertaken all the work of turning 
the course of a river, and their property was confiscated 
as soon as it was perceived to be valuable. 2 And the 
turpitude of such conduct is especially manifest from the 
fact that the foreigners (as Auger, just cited, admits in 
case of his own countrymen) were in any case, and even 
under the fairest treatment, at a serious disadvantage in 
all operations of an extensive sort, by reason of their 
comparative deficiency in the character and training 
required in order to improvise, amid the confusion of 
a new country, greater organizations of labor and cap- 
ital. The Frenchmen, says Auger (p. 106), in case of 

1 See in the steamer Alia (Harvard College Library file) for July 
13, 1852, the account of the expulsion of foreign miners, French and 
Spanish- American especially, from expensive and valuable claims in 
Mariposa. See, also, resolutions of miners at Sonora, passed October 
12, in the steamer Alia of November 1, ordering foreigners out of the 
mines. 

2 E. Auger, in his Voyage en Cnlifornie (Paris, 1857), p. 112, gives 
an account from hearsay, whose correctness I am unable to control, of 
one of the earlier difficulties between French and American miners in 
the southern mines, and remarks in that connection, very accurately, 
that, among the miners " La justice favorise generalement les Ame'ri- 
cains aux depens des etrangers." On page 106, the author recounts 
from hearsay another quarrel at this time over a river-bed claim, " sur 
le Stanislaus-river," where his countrymen were violently dispos- 
sessed. This may be the Mariposa case misplaced. 



366 CALIFORNIA. 

great mining undertakings, "ont toujours cede au de- 
couragement qui remplagait chez eux une ardeur im- 
moderee ou aux divisions intestines qui les separaient 
brusquement au moment de recueillir les fruits de leur 
enterprise." He excepts only the one greater case cited, 
where the Americans did the work of dissolution for the 
Frenchmen. 1 Thus, however, the very instinct and 
training of which we in this land have such good rea- 
son to be proud, aggravates, in the present case, our dis- 
grace. Because we knew so well how to organize, we 
were not the weak nor the injured party, but had these 
foreigners at our mercy ; and for the same reason our 
outrages upon them were organized outrages, expressions 
of our peculiar national combination of a love of order 
with a frequently detestable meanness towards stran- 
gers. 

The northern mines, however, are often supposed to 
have been not only more orderly, but also more tolerant. 
This is probably, on the whole, the case. As there 
were fewer foreigners present in the northern mines, 
the temptations to abuse them were less frequent. In 
some cases, however, proof can be found even in the 
southern mines themselves of very great earnestness in 
the enforcement of the rights of foreigners. An amus- 
ing account is given (in a book that contains a series 
of well-written and apparently substantially truthful 
sketches of California life, by a Canadian) of a demon- 
stration in a camp on the Stanislaus, as late as 1856, by 
the whole force of the camp to protect certain Chinamen 

1 Borthwick, op. cit, p. 369, cited also by Mr. Shinn, in the Mining 
Camps, p. 155, contrasts finely the organizing power of the American 
miners with the gregarious habits of the seldom organized French 
miners, and makes the fact illustrate national peculiarities. 



TEE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 367 

in their rights as miners. 1 This camp, Shaw tells us, 
was inhabited mainly by miners from the northern States 
of the Union, and where the influence of such was par- 
amount it may have been, in general, a somewhat more 
tolerant influence. Yet, once for all, our American 
intolerance towards the unassimilable foreigner is not 
a sectional peculiarity, however often it may appear 
somewhat more prominently in one section of our 
land than in another. And the northern mines show us 
numerous cases of it. " Shirley's " experiences, we 
remember, were in the northern mines. It was in the 
same mines, and in the same summer of 1852, that 
miners' meetings at Bidwell's Bar, at Foster's Bar, at 
Rough and Ready, and elsewhere, passed resolutions 
excluding foreigners. 2 This shows how the same vain 
and demoralizing undertakings were still believed in at 
the north that had been so disastrous at the south. 
And one sees in another form how little reliance can be 
placed upon the impression that the baseness of the for- 
eigners in California was to blame for the chief troubles 

1 Pringle Shaw, Ramblings in California (Toronto, James Bain ; date 
of publication not given, but apparently not far from 1858), p. 72, 
sqq. An American miner sold his claim to Chinamen, who were dis- 
possessed by three "gaunt long-haired fellows" from Arkansas. 
Shaw was himself the recorder of claims in the district, appointed to 
his office by the miners' meeting. The Chinamen complained to him, 
he remonstrated with the " jumpers," and was insulted and threat- 
ened by them. He then called out the force of the camp, about one 
hundred men, who marched in militarj'' order to the disputed claim, 
under arms, and gave solemn warning to the Arkansas trio to leave it 
in five minutes. The order was obeyed. 

2 Steamer Alta for May 31 and June 15, 1852. In the meeting at 
Bidwell's Bar, the miners expressed great indignation at "all mer- 
chants and shipping agents engaged in transporting "a countless 
number of villains from all parts of the world to California." So the 
Alta (steamer edition of June 15) expresses their view, partly in their 
own words. 



368 CALIFORNIA. 

of the struggle for order in the mines. But, as a crown- 
ing illustration of the position of the northern miners 
in this matter, the fact remains that in Downieville, far 
up in the northern mines, was committed in the sum- 
mer of 1851 the most outrageous act of lynch law in all 
the pioneer annals, the entirely unnecessary hanging of 
a woman, whose death, under the circumstances, was 
plainly due, not merely to her known guilt, but quite as 
much to the faet that she was not an American. And 
the deed was not only done but defended by American 
miners. 

IX. THE DOWNIEVILLE LYNCHING OF JULY 5, 1851. 

Very obvious considerations lead civilized men, in 
times of social disturbance even more than in times of 
peace and good order, to be lenient to the public of- 
fenses of women. A man who gravely transgresses 
against order is necessarily viewed first of all as trans- 
gressor, and only in the second place do his fellows re- 
member that considerations of mercy, of charity, or of 
his own personal merit, may enter, to qualify the stern- 
ness of justice towards him. But a woman, however 
she transgresses against law and order, is necessarily 
regarded first of all as a woman, and only in the second 
place does one remember that even in her case justice 
must have its place. Therefore all the considerations 
that may render lynch law a temporary necessity among 
men in an unsettled community have, obviously, abso- 
lutely no application to the few women who may chance 
to be there. If they become intolerable, a quiet ex- 
pulsion of them must serve, until such a time as the 
community, having made up its mind to behave sensibly, 
has provided prisons to confine them. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 369 

However, the people of Downieville, in July, 1851, 
were once led to think differently. The incident has 
been frequently mentioned in books and essays about 
the early times, and has often been regarded with hor- 
ror, and often, also, explained and even defended, as a 
necessity of the moment. Garbled accounts of it are 
found, sometimes, in the later pioneer reminiscences. 1 
Of the newspapers of the time that I have been able to 
use, but one, so far as I know, has an extended account 
of the affair coming directly from an eye-witness. This 
paper is the " Daily Pacific Star," of San Francisco, 
whose version, I believe, has never yet been employed 
for historical purposes. I had the good fortune to come 
upon this version while consulting a partial file of the 
paper in the Mercantile Library in San Francisco, and 
upon it I have here largely depended. Other news- 
paper reports, such as the " Alta " account, or that in 
the " Sacramento Transcript," I have seen ; but they 
are brief and unsatisfactory. On the whole it is plain 
that the newspapers, even in those plain-spoken days of 
early California, were disposed to hush the matter up as 
soon as possible. One of the editors of the " Star " 
happened to be in Downieville at the time ; hence this 
particular report in the " Star " for July 19, 1851. 

On the night of July 4, one Cannan, apparently an 
American, 2 was walking home with some friends, in a 
state of mind and body appropriate to the occasion, 

1 See, for example, the otherwise generally inaccurate essay of Mr. 
H. Robinson, on " Pioneer Times in California," in the Overland 
Monthly for 1872, vol. viii. p. 457. See, also, Borthvvick's uncon- 
sciously unfair version, from hearsay, op. cit., p. 222. 

2 If Mr. Robinson, in the essay cited, can be viewed a3 trustworthy, 
he was a man of good position among the miners, and member of an 
influential order. 

24 



370 CALIFORNIA. 

when they passed near the house where, as they well 
knew, there lived, together with her Spanish paramour, 
a young woman of Spanish-American race. She was, 
it would seem, a person whose associates were mostly 
gamblers ; just how irregular her life was does not 
appear, save from this one item about her paramour. 
To judge by what is stated, she may therefore have been 
of at least pretended fidelity to him. All accounts make 
her a woman of considerable beauty, of some intelligence 
and vivacity, and of a still quite youthful appearance ; 
and she seems to have been a person not at all despised 
in the camp. At this moment her house was dark, and 
the occupants were sleeping. But Cannan, in passing 
by, stumbled and fell, as his companions say, against the 
door of her house ; and the light, rude door giving way, 
he fell half inside. One of his companions pulled him 
back, saying : " Come out ; hush up ; there 's a woman 
in that house," or some such words. As Cannan rose, 
he had, in a drunken whim, picked up something from 
the floor, just inside the house door — a scarf or some 
like article ; and his companions with difficulty got it 
away from him to throw it back. Then they all found 
their probably devious way homewards. 

Next morning Cannan, with one of the same compan- 
ions, passed by the house, and announced to his com- 
panion his purpose to apologize to the woman for having 
made the disturbance of the night before. Cannan 
could speak Spanish, which his companion did not un- 
derstand, so that we have, in this respect, no competent 
witness surviving the following scene. At all events, 
as Cannan's companion testifies, the companion of the 
woman met them at the door as they approached, and 
seemed angry with Cannan, and was understood to 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 371 

threaten him. A moment later, the woman herself 
appeared, and spoke yet more angrily. Cannan con- 
tinued the conversation in what seemed to his companion 
a conciliatory tone ; the woman, however, grew con- 
stantly more excited at his words, whatever they were, 
and erelong drew a knife, rushed quickly upon him, 
and stabbed him to death at a stroke. Whether Cannan 
really gave any momentary provocation by violent and 
insulting language addressed to the woman, this Ameri- 
can witness is of course unable to testify. Both the 
woman herself and her paramour afterwards asserted 
that he did, and that it was his abuse, used in the course 
of the quarrel, which drove her to the act, in an outburst 
of fury. 

The deed was quickly known throughout the town, 
and the citizens at once organized a popular court, in 
the ordinary lynchers' form, with an elected judge and 
a jury. The woman and her paramour were brought 
before the court, the crowd feeling and showing mean- 
while very great excitement. Some shouted, " Hang 
them ; " others, " Give them a trial" Our eye-witness 
heard a number also shout, " Give them a fair trial 
and then hang them" a compromise which seems per- 
fectly to have expressed the Great American Mind, as 
represented by these particular townspeople. A gentle- 
man present, named Thayer, protested indeed openly, 
during the excitement, against this popular violence, but 
he was ordered by the crowd " to consult his own safety 
and desist." The trial began in the presence of the 
impatient crowd. The disturbance of the previous night 
was recounted ; Cannan's friends insisting that there 
was no intention on their part to trouble the woman; 
and that what happened was due to a drunken accident 



372 CALIFORNIA. 

and a frail door. The murder was described by Can- 
nan's companion, and the two accused, being called 
upon, both gave, as the woman's sole justification, her 
rage at Cannan's midnight disturbance, and at his abuse. 
The man had evidently had no part in the murder, 
which was the work of the instant. 

Then followed, it would seem, a recess in the trial, and 
thereafter a little more testimony for the defense. A 
physician, Dr. Aiken, was called by the woman, and 
gave it as his opinion that she was with child in the 
third month. The doctor made, as the editor tells us, 
a very unfavorable impression on the people. The only 
reason given for this unfavorable impression is " that he 
seemed desirous, so it was thought, to save the prisoner." 
Never before this in California, and never since, so far 
as I know, has Judge Lynch been called upon to deal 
with the delicate question now presented to this court. 
The Great American Mind suggested, under the circum- 
stances, a consultation of physicians, and another physi- 
cian was called, who, with Dr. Aiken, retired into a 
house, taking the prisoner. The Great American Mind 
itself, meanwhile, grew intensely excited outside the 
frail structure in which the consultation was taking 
place ; and this mind induced the crowd who represented 
it to threaten fiercely, and in no whispers, the offending 
Dr. Aiken, and to fill the air with shouts of " Hang 
her." The result whereof was that at this very orderly 
and decent consultation of scientific experts, while Dr. 
Aiken seems not to have been convinced of his error, 
the consulting physician kept his own and his fellow's 
skin safe by announcing what we may hope to have 
been a sincere, and even by chance a well-founded, opin- 
ion, that differed altogether from Dr. Aiken's. Here- 



TEE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 373 

upon the jury soon quieted the tumult of the Great 
American Mind by declaring their verdict of guilty 
against the woman, and by themselves passing sentence 
of death upon her, while they acquitted the man. As 
it is an old trick of hypocritical flatterers of public opin- 
ion in this land to attribute all outrages and riots to our 
foreign fellow-residents, we do only justice if we remark 
that the names of the jurymen at this trial are given, 
and are as native to our language as are the names of 
Bunyan's jurymen at the trial of Faithful. In this in- 
stance, then, they are such names as Burr, B-eed, Wood- 
ruff, and the like. 

One who fancies that the fair prisoner was over- 
whelmed with abject terror all this while does not know 
her race. That same afternoon she was to suffer, and, 
when the time came, she walked out very quietly and 
amiably, with hair neatly braided, stepped up to the 
improvised gallows, and made a short speech, in which 
she bade them all a cheerful farewell, and said that she 
had no defense for her crime, save that she had been 
made very angry by Cannan, and would surely do the 
same thing again if she were to be spared, and were 
again to be as much insulted by anybody. Then she 
adjusted her own noose, and cheerfully passed away. 

This account, in so far as it is due to the " Star " editor, 
is not the account of an enemy of the Downievilie 
people, or of an angry spectator. The " Star " says, 
editorially, that it cannot very heartily approve of this 
hasty lynching of a woman, but that it expects the moral 
effect of the act to be on the whole good. Downievilie 
had been much troubled with bad characters, and a 
necessity existed for some action. " We witnessed the 
trial, and feel convinced that the actors desired to do 



37-i CALIFORNIA. 

right." They had in fact themselves solicited this pub- 
lication. One is reminded, as one reads, of the saying 
attributed to " Boss " Tweed, in his last moments. "He 
had tried" he declared, " to do right, but he had had 
bad luck." The people of Downieville obviously had 
bad luck. 

X. THE ATTAINMENT OF ORDER. 

Yet, after all, the effect of these outbursts of popular 
fury was indirectly good, although not in the way that 
many pioneers like to dwell upon. The good effect 
lay in the very horror begotten by the popular demoral- 
ization that all this violence tended to produce. While 
a part of the community was debased by all these doings, 
and was given over to a false and brutal confidence in 
mob law, a confidence that many individual men have 
never since lost, the better part of every such mining 
community learned, from all this disorder,, the sad lesson 
that their stay in California was to be long, their social 
responsibility great, and their duty to devote time and 
money to rational work as citizens unavoidable. They 
saw the fearful effects of their own irresponsible freedom. 
They began to form town governments of a more stable 
sort, to condemn rather than to excuse mob violence, to 
regard the free and adventurous prospecting life, if pur- 
sued on a grand scale, as a dangerous and generally 
profitless waste of the community's energies, to prefer 
thereto steady work in great mining enterprises, and in 
every way to insist upon order. The coming of women, 
the growth of families, the formation of church organi- 
zations, the building of school-houses, the establishment 
of local interests of all sorts, saved the wiser communi- 
ties from the horrors of lynch law. The romantic 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 375 

degradation of the early mining life, with its transient 
glory, its fatal fascination, its inevitable brutality, and 
its resulting loathsome corruption, gave place to the 
commonplace industries of the later mining days. The 
quartz mines and the deep placers were in time devel- 
oped, vast amounts of capital came to be invested in the 
whole mining industry, and in a few years (by 1858, 
for instance) many mining towns were almost as con- 
servative as much older manufacturing towns have been 
in other States. For all this result, lynch law in the 
mines, after 1850, was responsible only in so far as it 
excited in the minds of sensible men a horror of its own 
disorderly atrocities. Save in the newest camps, and in 
those most remote from regular courts, one can say 
almost universally that, in so far as the lynch law had 
been orderly, it had been at best the symptom and out- 
come of a treasonable popular carelessness, while, in so 
far as it had been disorderly, it had been brutal and 
demoralizing, and in itself an unmixed evil. Almost 
everywhere, moreover, as we have seen, it was not an 
externally produced necessity, forced from without upon 
the community by the violence of invading criminals ; 
but it was the symptom of an inner social disease. For 
this disease the honest men themselves were the ones 
most responsible, since they were best able to understand 
their duty. The lesson of the whole matter is as simple 
and plain as it is persistently denied by a romantic 
pioneer vanity ; and our true pride, as we look back to 
those days of sturdy and sinful life, must be, not that 
the pioneers could so successfully show by their popular 
justice their undoubted instinctive skill in self-govern- 
ment, — although indeed, despite all their sins, they 
showed such a skill also ; but that the moral elasticity of 



376 CALIFORNIA. 

our people is so great, their social vitality so marvelous, 
that a community of Americans could sin as fearfully 
as, in the early years, the mining community did sin, 
and could yet live to purify itself within so short a time, 
not by a revolution, but by a simple progress from 
social foolishness to social steadfastness. Even thus a 
great river, for an hour defiled by some corrupting 
disturbance, purifies itself, merely through its own flow, 
over its sandy bed, beneath the wide and sunny heav- 
ens. 



CHAPTER V. 

SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 

The conservative social elements are apt to escape our 
notice as we study any time of great activity. They are 
too commonplace to fall under the easy observation of 
eyes that have become accustomed to bright lights and 
to strong contrasts of color. Yet we must study them 
also, and especially as they showed themselves, side by 
side with some of the worst elements of disorder, in the 
early life of San Francisco. 

For in San Francisco, after all, the great battle was 
to be fought and the victory won, for the cause of last- 
ing progress in California. Elsewhere the struggle was 
either in smaller and more nearly separate towns, or else 
in the wide but dependent rural districts. But upon 
the city by the Golden Gate all the permanent success of 
the good cause depended. Here the young State was, so 
to speak, nourished. Here the ships and a great part 
of the immigrants came. Here was from the first the 
centre of the State's mental life, and to a great extent 
of its political life. Here good order must be preserved, 
if any permanent order was to be possible elsewhere. 
And so of course the progress of San Francisco was to 
be largely identical with the progress of the whole of the 
new State. 

In the mines, as we have said, the great and compara- 
tively permanent business interests of the years after 



378 CALIFORNIA. 

1851, and the consequent rapid establishment of all the 
institutions of town life, rapidly wrought to transform 
the more successful camps into thrifty, orderly, and re- 
spectable American communities. We have said little 
of the details of such transformations, because one can 
best study the same process, only on a larger scale, in 
the case of San Francisco, where from the first there 
were large business interests ; where, soonest of all places 
in the growing parts of the country, there were to be 
found numerous families ; and where the most justly in- 
fluential men were not wanderers only, but often mer- 
chants of high character, of conservative aims, and of 
extraordinary ability. San Francisco best illustrates 
the mechanics of the growth of good order. Naturally, 
however, we are here, as before, driven to consider many 
dramatic incidents that belong to the painful side of the 
struggle for order. 

I. THE NEW CITY AND THE GREAT FERES. 

Externally, the San Francisco of 1848 underwent 
almost magical changes within the next three years. 
They have been so often described by enthusiastic trav- 
elers and sketch-writers that one need spend no very 
long time on them here. At first the new-comers, in 
San Francisco as in the mines, would temporarily be- 
stow themselves in tents. But there are reasons why a 
tent in San Francisco, even in the dry summer-time, 
in the cold sea-breezes, is not an agreeable dwelling. 
Hence the rapid growth of very lightly and rudely built 
houses, half wood, half cloth. All of these brought 
enormous rents. 

Wierzbicki, in the pamphlet once before cited, page 
49,, writes : " Four months ago " (this is written in Au- 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 379 

gust or September, 1849) " the town hardly counted 
fifty houses, and now it must have upwards of five hun- 
dred, and these are daily increasing. . . . From eight 
to ten thousand inhabitants may be afloat in the streets 
of San Francisco, and hundreds arrive daily ; many live 
in shanties, many in tents, and many the best way they 
can." Bayard Taylor's account of his first view at 
nearly this same time * runs : " The view extended 
around the curve of the bay, and hundreds of tents and 
houses appeared, scattered all over the heights, and 
along the shore for more than a mile. A furious wind 
was blowing down through a gap in the hills, filling the 
streets with clouds of dust. On every side stood build- 
ings of all kinds, begun or half finished, and the greater 
part of them mere canvas sheds, open in front, and 
covered with all kinds of signs, in all languages. Great 
quantities of goods were piled up in the open air, for 
want of a place to store them. The streets were full of 
people, hurrying to and fro, and of as diverse and 
bizarre a character as the houses." He then mentions 
the various nationalities that he could pick out in the 
throng. They were not a few, Asiatic and European. 

An example of the better sort of house in the new 
town was the " Parker House," an ordinary frame 
building, which, before winter, was in part rented to 
gamblers, who are said to have paid at the rate of sixty 
thousand dollars a year for their part of it. Even 
higher is the sum that they are declared by Bayard 
Taylor and others to have paid. As for the character 
of all but the best of the hotels, the early sketches are 
never weary of describing to us their enormous prices 
and their fearful accommodations, — the dirt, the fleas, 
1 El Dorado, p. 55. 



880 CALIFORNIA. 

and the other numberless miseries of a crowded and 
hasty life. 1 And even the best of the hotels were poor 
indeed, although what they furnished in the way of 
food was better than their other accommodations. 2 Be- 
tween the hotel, as the home of the well-to-do wanderer, 
and the bed on the sand, under the stars, men found 
all sorts of intermediate fashions of living, according as 
luck guided them. Labor, during the whole summer of 
1849, commanded, of course, the highest prices in San 
Francisco, and was hard to get at those ; so that none 
of the new-comers needed to starve, while even the 
wealthiest man had to do some hard handiwork for him- 
self. 

Before the beginning of the rainy season piers were 
creeping out into the bay, 3 while the chaparral growth 
on the hill-sides above the town was rapidly driven 
backward by the houses, while warehouses were build- 
ing along the shore, and while the daily growing forests 
of masts in the bay gave proof of the general abandon- 
ment of their ships by the impatient crews. These de- 
serted sailing-vessels rotted, many of them, for years in 
the harbor, the price of labor for a good while hardly 
permitting any undertaking to man them for a return 
voyage, while the clippers erelong rendered the older 
vessels finally worthless. Only the steamship company 
could during this summer of 1849 undertake to main- 
tain its regular trips to and from Panama, carrying the 
mails and the crowds of new-coming isthmus passengers. 

This confused and hurriedly built town, crowded be- 

1 Annals, p. 247. 

2 Bayard Taylor, loc. cit., p. 60. 

3 See Bayard Taylor's second view, loc. cit., p. 109 ; J. S. Hittell's 
History of San Francisco, p. 146. 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 381 

tween the steep hills and the bay, with all its tents and 
its rude warehouses and its flimsy gambling palaces set 
down at random, the " water coming up to Montgomery 
Street," as the old pioneers are never tired of telling 
one, 1 and the vast fleet of sea-worn vessels lying beyond, 
and idly rotting in the bay, — this strange picture will 
never be forgotten. But within the town itself the scene, 
upon the approach of winter, was yet further confused 
by the great rains of 1849-50 ; by the miserable, un- 
improved streets, full of fathomless mixed sand and clay 
mud ; and by the increasing crowds of idlers, whom the 
rainy weather brought back to the town from the inte- 
rior. To a new-comer the San Franciscans at this mo- 
ment, living in their rag palaces, or renting them at 
figures that would have sounded possible in the Ara- 
bian Nights, and doing all this even while the mining 
industry itself was suspended by the rains, and while the 
source of all the wealth was thus temporarily cut off, 
seemed more like madmen than ever. A correspond- 
ent of the " New York Evening Post," under date of 
November 15, 1849, gives with a half-serious fury and 
contempt an amusing account of the landlords of San 
Francisco at this moment : 2 — 

" The people of San Francisco are mad, stark mad. 
... A dozen times or more, during the last few weeks, 
I have been taken by the arm by some of the million- 
naires — ■ so they call themselves, I call them madmen — 
of San Francisco, looking wondrously dirty and out at 

1 Montgomery Street, at that time running along the edge of Yerba 
Buena cove, towards its northern end, was erelong separated from the 
bay by the filling in of the whole cove, and is now a number of blocks 
from the water. 

2 I find the letter quoted in the National Intelligencer of January 
3, 1850. 



382 CALIFORNIA. 

elbows for men of such magnificent pretensions. They 
have dragged me about, through the mud and filth al- 
most up to my middle, from one pine box to another, 
called mansion, hotel, bank, or store, as it may please 
the imagination, and have told me, with a sincerity that 
would have done credit to the Bedlamite, that these 
splendid . . . structures were theirs, and they, the for- 
tunate proprietors, were worth from two to three hun- 
dred thousand dollars a year each. . . . There must be 
nearly two thousand houses besides the tents, which are 
still spread in numbers. . . . And what do you sup- 
pose to be the rental, the yearly value, of this card- 
house city ? Not less, it is said, than twelve millions of 
dollars, and this with a population of about twelve thou- 
sand. New York, with its five hundred thousand inhab- 
itants, does not give a rental of much more than this, if 
as much." 

In fact, these rag-palace owners no doubt were mod- 
erately insane, not so much in their estimate of the 
wealth of the new land as in their tacit assumption that 
rags would not burn. And accordingly in December, 
1849, there came the first great San Francisco fire, 
which burned a million dollars' worth of the rags and 
of the wealth that had been stored in the houses made 
of them. Nobody ventured to mourn very long over 
this disaster ; and very soon the burned district stood 
rebuilt, in the full glory of wooden bandboxes that 
were to be rented once more at the rates that would 
have befitted kings' houses. The 4th of May, 1850, 
saw, however, the second great fire, which was much 
more disastrous than the first to the business interests 
of the place, since it affected less the gamblers, and 
more the warehouses of the merchants, than the first fire 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 383 

had clone, and since withal it destroyed three millions 
instead of one million of property. A third fire, of 
which much the same may he said, took place June 14th. 
Rags were thenceforth prohibited 1 within the fire limits 
of the town ; which resolved to be staid and sober there- 
after, and to use as building material nothing more 
combustible than kindling-wood. The hills of San 
Mateo County, to the southward, were, accordingly, yet 
more rapidly stripped of their fine redwood trees, and 
the city nailed together the light boards more busily 
than ever, and grew with vast rapidity. September 17, 
1850, was indeed marked by another serious fire, but 
not one of enormous size. And, indeed, not until May 
4, 1851, the anniversary of the second fire, did the citi- 
zens find fresh and sufficient reason to repent of their 
conduct. 

Meanwhile, during 1850, both the domestic business of 
the State and the commerce by sea came to get a more 
rational character. The Eastern merchants grew some- 
what accustomed to their California trade, and began, 
before the end of 1850, to build their famous swift clip- 
per-ships to supply it ; and, of course, their plans now 
included sufficient wages to attract and to hold trustwor- 
thy crews for voyages to the waters of the golden land. 
Thus the San Francisco market soon came to get a bet- 
ter and more steady supply of what was needed. The 
land, which had, so far, to import from distant places 
nearly everything, including breadstuff's, potatoes, and 
butter, had suffered already terribly from the wild fluc- 
tuations of prices that had characterized its San Fran- 
cisco markets, and that, of course, had resulted from 
the lack of any definite source or method of supply. 
1 J. S. Hittell, op. tit., p. 157. 



384 CALIFORNIA. 

The ships had brought as cargoes everything and any- 
thing, in the wildest confusion, and amid the utmost 
general ignorance of shippers both about what Califor- 
nia needed and about the storage of goods for such long 
voyages. Cargoes of coal, for instance, were sent from 
Baltimore in bulk, and without proper means for venti- 
lating the holds during the long voyage around the 
Horn. Many such cargoes consequently took fire and 
were lost. 1 Preserved articles of food were sent that 
on arrival proved to be tainted and worthless. Whole 
houses — some of wood, others of corrugated iron — 
were shipped in pieces, and were in some cases service- 
able, but were also often worthless. Elaborate gold- 
washing machines came, which might be adequate to 
every possible sort of investigation of mud save such an 
investigation as would show whether there was any gold 
in it, but which never showed that. Of the things ac- 
tually and seriously needed in California there might at 
one moment come twenty times too much, and shortly 
thereafter there might be nothing at all of the kind 
needed discoverable in the market. 2 To all this confu- 
sion the clipper-ships, making swift and regular, though 
of course still far too long, voyages, could not put an 

1 See Mrs. Bates's account, in her Four Years on the Pacific Coast, 
Boston, 1858, of her voyage to California. She was three times in 
succession in coal-carrying vessels, all of which were burned. She 
escaped each time quite safely, and reached her goal at last, a little 
nervous, of course, about coal as an article of commerce. 

2 According to the Post correspondent, above cited, bread had, in 
November, 1849, risen from twenty-five to fifty cents a loaf, the price 
being for a small loaf, not much larger than a breakfast-roll. All 
business at that moment, as he declares, is pure gambling ; so that, 
whether one is in the gambling places or out of them, one finds the 
whole town a vast gambling hell. One often pays, in fact, ten per 
cent, a month for monev. 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 385 

entire stop ; but they improved the state of things very 
much, as merchants could correspond with Eastern ship- 
pers by steamer, and then be sure of getting their in- 
voices in some fairly determinate time by means of the 
clippers. The clippers erelong rejoiced in large size, 
in fine outlines, in poetical names, in wonderful records 
for speed, and all through the years before the war they 
were the glory of our American commerce. Long 
since, as we know, they have vanished from the seas. 1 

The year 1851 brought its further great material 
changes to San Francisco. Foremost in importance 
was the fire of May 4, which destroyed, at the very 
least estimate, some seven millions of dollars' worth of 
property, 2 and was thence called " the great fire." 
The account given of the causes that conspired to make 
it so great is, as one finds the tale in the " Alta " (loc. 
cit.), worthy of note. The chief engineer, with num- 
bers of firemen, was away, that fatal night between 
May 3d and 4th, at Sacramento. There was, just then, 
a kind of interregnum between two city councils — the 
old one having adjourned, and the new not having been 
sworn in; therefore nobody felt empowered to order 
the tearing down of buildings to check the flames. 
Some of the engines lacked hose ; all of them lacked 

1 The commercial life of San Francisco, from this early period 
down to the completion of the Pacific railroad, was characterized by 
the institution known as "steamer-day," i. e., the day preceding the 
departure of each Panama steamer. On this day collections were 
made, correspondence with the East prepared, and an enormous mass 
of business done in connection with the importing trade. The special 
"steamer editions " of the papers were prepared on these days. 

2 See J. S. Hittell, op. cit., p. 168, whose estimate is founded on that 
of the Alta of the date of the fire, known to me in the steamer edition 
of May 15. The Alta editor was, however, himself disposed to think 
this estimate too low. 

25 



386 CALIFORNIA. 

water. The wind was high. Among the spectators 
" there was generally a great want of concentrated ef- 
fort." In short, as one sees, the whole affair was a 
perfect expression of the civilization of the moment. 
Sixteen entire squares of houses were consumed, with 
parts of several others, and several lives were lost. 
The municipality of this mushroom place, as one may 
remark, was at that moment in debt, for the expenses 
of the city government, over one million of dollars ; 
and this calamity of the great fire was surely a fitting 
work for such a municipal organization to accomplish 
over night. 1 

The great fire was met with the same general and 
heroic good-humor that had always been shown before. 
There were, of course, men who were utterly crushed 
and crazed by it. But the community as a whole was 
soon as cheery as ever, and at least a trifle wiser than 
before ; not so much in its immediately following con- 
duct as in its plans for the future. The " Alta " of that 
date begs the city authorities not to pass at once any 
ordinance restricting or forbidding the building of 
frame houses within fire limits, since such a measure at 
that moment would drive away too many who are now 
hesitating whether to risk another trial of their fortune 
in the city. Everybody, says the editor, is now con- 
vinced of the need of fireproof buildings. Let the 
merchants, however, build temporary sheds on their 
lots at once, and begin business afresh. Then they 
will soon be able to build better structures. And, in 
fact, the commercial part of the city was erelong much 
better built, and the portion of the city that had suf- 

i See the Annals, p. 328, for the city debt, and p. 329 for the fire. 
The Annals make the loss from ten to twelve millions of dollars. 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 387 

fered from the greatest of the fires remained thence- 
forth comparatively free from such calamities. 

But higher up the hill-side, and among the dwellings 
of the town, the last of the great fires was still to do its 
work. On Sunday, June 22, 1851, the " Alta " news- 
paper opened the day with a fine editorial on the de- 
lights and the duty of a truly religious Sabbath rest. 
It added, indeed, to this editorial the announcement 
in its local columns that this same Sabbath evening 
there would be presented at the Jenny Lind theatre 
(a famous place of amusement, which had been built on 
the site of the old Parker House) " three laughable 
farces," namely, " The Widow's Victim " and two oth- 
ers, together with " dancing by Senorita Abalos." At 
half-past ten o'clock that morning an alarm of fire was 
sounded at the corner of Pacific and Powell streets, 
just as the church bells were tolling. People on their 
way to church, as well as the idlers of Sunday morning, 
were soon in crowds about the fire. But there was 
little to be done to check it. The city had still no 
proper or adequate water supply; a few " reservoirs " 
there indeed were, lower down, in the now nearly re- 
built business portion of the city, where the May fire 
had raged, but here, among the dwelling-houses, there 
was no water, and the little one and two story buildings 
burned, says the "Alta," like shavings. The genial 
summer sea-breeze of San Francisco, which usually 
amuses itself with merely filling one's eyes with sand, 
had now something better than sand to drive before it, 
and quickly warmed to its savage work. In a little 
time it had become a gale. The fire-engines came, but, 
since they had little or no water, they could only stand 
by as silent exponents of the city's official disapproval 



388 CALIFORNIA. 

of fires. People tried to check the flames by tearing 
down the little houses that stood in the track ; but, as 
we know, one can more easily burn an old box than tear 
it to pieces, and the nails were the only sound part of 
these houses. Hence the fire soon drove off the defend- 
ers. By the time the office of the " Alta " itself was 
reached, on Washington Street, the presence at that 
point of a good private fire-engine and of plenty of 
water in a tank, and even the blowing up with powder 
of the adjoining building, did not save the " Alta " 
building, with the types and the presses, from total de- 
struction. About the Plaza the flames raged fiercely. 
Three or four men lost their lives in the course of the 
day. A very sick man was saved from his burning 
lodgings by his friends, and carried on his bed into the 
middle of the Plaza for safety ; and there, amid the 
burning heat, the cinders, and the bitter smoke, he 
died, his body lying in plain sight, among the crowds 
and the heaps of goods, during the day. These heaps 
of goods themselves several times caught fire as they 
lay. The " old adobe " on the Plaza, of which we shall 
hear in another connection, was destroyed. It was the 
last remaining relic of the old village of Yerba Buena. 
The city hospital was also burned, the ninety patients 
then in it being safely removed for the moment to a 
vacant lot. 

Senorita Abalos did not dance on the stage of the 
Jenny Lind theatre that Sunday night, nor did people 
laugh at the " Widow's Victim " and the other laugh- 
able farces. For the Jenny Lind theatre was once more 
a heap of hot ashes, and, on the hills above the town, 
hundreds or even thousands of homeless wretches shiv- 
ered, amid the chaparral bushes, over whatever rem- 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 389 

nants of their little store of household goods or of treas- 
ure they had been able to save. 

The fire of June 22 was emphatically a poor man's 
fire. The great fire of May 4th had burned the busi- 
ness part of the city, and had destroyed vast wealth. 
But this last fire burned chiefly the houses of people 
who had little else but their houses to lose. The total 
loss was indeed not above three millions of dollars, 
some ten squares of these board hovels being totally de- 
stroyed, with parts of several other squares. But the 
immediate suffering was possibly very nearly as great as 
that caused by the fire of May 4th. " Thousands of peo- 
ple," says the " Alta " next day, " are homeless. We are 
sick with what we have seen and felt, and need not say 
any more." The " Alta " itself was printed that next 
morning on borrowed presses and from borrowed types 
set up in the office of one of its fellow-newspapers. Its 
page had shriveled from seven columns to five, and the 
columns were some five inches shorter than on the pre- 
vious day. 

Thenceforth, as we learn from the " Annals," 1 " many 
of the buildings " showed " a wonderful improvement in 
strength and grandeur." An improvement in " grand- 
eur," above that shown in a board hovel, meant, in the 
business part of the city, the building of substantial and 
generally very modest and useful brick buildings, sup- 
plied with double iron shutters and with large tanks of 
water. These same buildings still in a great number of 
cases remain in use. On its old site the Jenny Lind 
theatre was rebuilt, and during the next year was sold 
to the city for an exorbitant price, and converted into 
the city hall, which still remains on the Plaza, al- 

1 Page 345. 



390 CALIFORNIA. 

though the new city hall, far out on Market Street, has 
in recent years superseded it as the municipal headquar- 
ters. 

Outside of the business part of the city, wooden 
houses have, however, always remained the favorites of 
the San Franciscan. One prefers them in view of the 
character of the climate ; and one trusts, with a now 
well-founded confidence, in the energy and ability of 
the large and efficient fire department of the city as 
one's security against all fires. In the early years, also, 
and long before the modern paid fire department was 
organized or thought of, the lessons of these great fires 
were well taken to heart, from the middle of 1851 on, 
and the fire organizations of San Francisco were always 
strong and devoted. 1 

These, then, were the great transformations that the 
city underwent by reason of the early fires. In another 
and more healthful way, also, the city meanwhile trans- 
formed the appearance of its most important parts by 
rapidly carrying on the work of extending its water-front 
towards deep water, through the filling in of the old 
Yerba Buena cove. This was done by carrying sand 
over temporary tracks, in cars drawn by small engines. 
The busy water-front of 1851, with its numerous long 
wharves extending far out into the cove, with its hurry- 
ing crowds in which all nationalities were still repre- 
sented, and with its steam-cars occasionally rushing reck- 
lessly by, transporting their loads of sand, presented a 
scene far different from that of the confused heaps of 
merchandise and the cloth-houses of 1849 ; but it was 
still a characteristic early Californian scene. From the 
" Happy Valley," which lay to the south, the railway 
J See the enthusiastic chapter in the Annals, p. 614, sqq. 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 391 

track, in July, 1851, ran along Market and Battery- 
streets, transporting the sand to the rapidly filling water- 
lots. 1 Towards the end of that month, an accident hav- 
ing occurred, whereby a man was run over by the cars, 
losing his leg, an ordinance was proposed in the board 
of aldermen " to restrict the speed of the cars to six 
miles an hour." This restriction, however, would not 
have been enough of itself to check the evil ; for when, 
July 30, a man was killed by the same cars, on Mar- 
ket Street, the coroner's jury found that the accident 
might have been prevented, "if the car in front of 
the man conducting it had not been loaded higher than 
his head, thus preventing him from seeing the track." 2 
One's load, carried in front of one, was usually higher 
than one's head, in California in those days, and one 
seldom saw the track ahead, whatever might be one's 
business. Hence the disasters, individual and social, of 
the early days. But, amid all the confusion, the prog- 
ress towards physical stability, towards sound buildings, 
good and safe docks for ships, well-organized fire de- 
partments, and comparatively clean and decent streets, 
was sure. One great physical evil remains to be men- 
tioned as explaining many social evils. In the early 
years the streets, like those of London in the last cen- 
tury, were, save very near the Plaza, wholly unlighted at 
night. 8 

n. THE MORAL INSANITIES OF THE GOLDEN DATS. 

"We pass from physical to social conditions. Society, 
in these years, was affected first of all by certain obvi- 
ous and general mental disturbances of individual lives, — 

1 Alta of July 19, 1851. 2 Alia of July 31, 1851. 

8 Alta of July 19, 1851. 



392 CALIFORNIA. 

disturbances that had a decidedly pathological character. 
Most of the citizens were young men, and homeless. 
Their daily and most sober business was at best danger- 
ously near gambling, and their nerves were constantly 
tormented by unnatural and yet for the time inevitable 
excitements, of a perilously violent sort. They differed, 
moreover, from the miners, in that their life was as a 
rule comparatively sedentary, and in that they worked 
far more with their brains than with their hands. 
Hence these nervous excitements told upon them all 
the more seriously. Their problems, too, were far more 
complex and brain-wearying than those of the miners. 
The miner was apt to degenerate for lack of healthful 
mental exercise of any sort. As he was often a clever 
and educated man, he found his hard manual labor in- 
tolerable ; and at night he drank or gambled for the 
sake of forgetting the inanity of his toil. But the San 
Franciscan of property and position was differently be- 
set. He had all the mental labor that a man could 
need, and much more besides, and he had little or no 
true relaxation. Able and cultivated business men, 
who at home would have passed their evenings with their 
families, or in some other pleasant social intercourse, or 
perchance in lecture rooms or in theatres, here toiled 
every night until ten or eleven o'clock over their ac- 
counts, and began afresh on each new morning, as soon 
as the light shone over the far-off blue summit of Mount 
Diablo, the old fierce struggle with the confusions of 
their business undertakings. The self - absorption of 
this life was often something monstrous, and the con- 
sequences are no matter of mere theory. The insane 
asylum, which the State had very early to equip at 
Stockton, gave ample proof of the effects of this terrible 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 393 

nervous strain. The great number of patients at this 
asylum made a frequent subject of remark among the 
early writers about California. 1 Indirectly, however, 
one sees the same dangers illustrated even in the case o£ 
perfectly healthy and normal men, who stood the men- 
tal if not the moral strain as well as possible, and liked 
it. The life between 1849 and 1852 or 1853 has often 
seemed to such men, as they have looked back on it, 
like a wild dream. Even in so early a book as the 
" Annals," published in 1855, and in part written in 
1854, one finds the life of 1849 and 1850 regarded in 
this same dream-like and unsubstantial fashion. One col- 
lected, indeed, for this book, any number of trustworthy 
data from the newspapers ; but one often commented 
upon them in the most confused and forgetful fashion pos- 
sible. These things seemed to the author of the " An- 
nals " to have taken place ages ago. In the old home 
the young girl graduate of 1849 might, in 1854, have 
been quietly preparing for her early wedding, and for the 
very beginning of her life. But in California, as the 
" Annals " show us, these young men of 1854 already 
talked of the days of 1849 as they might of a romantic 
and almost forgotten ancient history. 2 And a delirious 
history it indeed became, for the authors of the " An- 
nals," as soon as the writers left their newspaper rec- 
ords, and began to repeat their memories, or the hearsay 
evidence of others. One can remember, as these men 
tell us, all sorts of confused emotions, but, as we judge 
from their wild and whirling words, one can remember 

1 See, for example, the remarks of the well-known pioneer " street- 
preacher," "Father" Taylor, in his California Life Illustrated, p. 
133. He gives official statistics. The asylum was founded in 1852. 

2 Annals, p. 217, p. 665, et passim. 



894 CALIFORNIA. 

nothing rational. Everybody, for instance, nsed to gam- 
ble : so one seems to remember. And gambling in the 
big saloons, under the strangely brilliant lamp-light, 
amid the wild music, the odd people, the sounding gold, 
used to be such a rapturous and fearful thing ! One 
cannot express this old rapture at all ! Judges and cler- 
gymen used to elbow their way, so one remembers, to 
the tables, and used to play with the rest. The men in 
San Francisco who did not thus gamble were too few to 
be noticed. If you condemn this gambling, so the his- 
torian continues, that is because you do not know the 
glorious rapture aforesaid, the rapture of gambling in a 
place where gambling is the only perfectly respectable 
amusement. But one's memory does indeed reach be- 
yond this respectable amusement ; and is equal to the 
description of decidedly worse things, in which of course 
everybody was also engaged ! There were some women 
in the city in 1849, but they were not exactly respecta- 
ble persons, yet they were the sole leaders of society. 
They too gave it even in later years a certain grace and 
gayety that makes one speak of them, with a curious 
sort of reverence, very frequently in the course of the 
" Annals." 1 Just as one cannot easily remember who 
the men were that did not gamble in those days, so one 
fails to recall in looking back on the early years the 

1 See p. 259, p. 368 (where these persons are spoken of in a curi- 
ously close connection with the "upper classes"), p. 503 (where San 
Franciscans are declared to be of the "conscientious" opinion, that, 
"after all, their wild and pleasant life is not so very, very wrong," 
and where the general degeneracy of the women in the city is reaf- 
firmed), p. £04, p. 507 ('the trains of lovely women"), et passim. 
The especial merit of a book previously cited, Grey's Pioneer Times 
in California, is that it points out these absurdities in the Annals, al- 
though, in doing so, the book itself makes various inaccurate state- 
ments. 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 395 

women who were respectable. Doubtless such existed ; 
but then they had that curious quality of respectable 
women, namely, they were somehow not conspicuous, 
especially in the public crowds. Hence, as the authors 
of the " Annals " seem, for some probably sufficient 
reason, to have been personally unable, in early days, 
to secure the honor of their acquaintance, the existence 
of these good women fails to become a matter of histori- 
cal record in the reminiscences with which so much of 
the confused volume is filled. 

Now, however, side by side with these wild memories 
of a society where every man and woman, without any 
notable exception, went to the devil on his or her own 
chosen primrose path, one has to record, as sober fact, 
taken from one's newspapers, such things as a very 
goodly array of pioneer churches, supported by active 
and not poverty-stricken societies. And " now " (in 
1854), " the city is full of [church] societies." * In 
fact, " such an array of churches and societies are surely 
evidences enough of the sincerity, zeal, and success of 
the early spirit of moral reform." 2 These societies 
have also done a large amount of charitable work ; they 
have from the first established benevolent institutions, 
their exercises are well attended, and their undertak- 
ings well supported with money, so that, as one con- 
cludes (p. 701) : " We have said enough, we hope, to 
prove that not all, nor nigh all the citizens of San Fran- 
cisco, are lost to everything but reckless dissipation. 
No city of equal size — few of ten times its age — can 
present such a list of men and institutions, who have 
accomplished so much real good with so little of cant 
and hypocrisy." 

l Page 697. 2 p ages 699, 700. 



396 CALIFORNIA. 

These significant contradictions sufficiently character- 
ize the spirit in which the annalists wrote their big book. 
San Francisco was to them a mere rubbish-heap of 
broken facts, and they had no conception of the sense 
of it. But their mood as writers depends, as we have 
just asserted, partly upon the pathological conditions 
connected with this life. Long-continued and unnatural 
excitement had disturbed their judgments. They were 
still very active and laborious men, and the immense 
collection of facts that they made for their book, from 
the early newspapers, will always remain a monument 
of industry. But, so far as their own past experiences 
were concerned, the excitements of the early years had 
made them simply incapable of telling any straight or 
coherent story about these years. And, as one may re- 
mark, the same infirmity has beset a good many San 
Francisco pioneers ever since. The cool-headed man, 
who did not make a fool of himself with absurd dissi- 
pations, nor destroy his health with continuous over- 
strain in making haste to be rich, can indeed give you 
helpful information about the early life, and such infor- 
mation we have frequently used in the pages of this 
book. But the boastful and reckless old pioneer who 
imagines himself to have seen all the heights and depths 
of the early life, who knows more about it, in conse- 
quence, than human speech can express, — he, when he 
begins to tell you of it, is commonly simply incoherent. 
He boasts on occasion, and with equal earnestness, of 
the piety and of the viciousness, of the gayety and of 
the seriousness, of the brutality and of the peacefulness 
of the early days. Any chance number of an early 
newspaper would tell yqu more about the pioneer com- 
munity than he will tell in a month. 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 397 

The prevalence of over-excitement, then, is perfectly- 
evident. And the dissipations of the town were, in a 
large part of their extravagances and bad consequences, 
the obvious result and expression of this purely physical 
nervous overstrain. Just how many previously respec- 
table and sober men went to the devil in the gambling 
halls, or with the help of the fast women, can never be 
known. They were undoubtedly far too numerous. 
The universal demoralization of which the authors of 
the " Annals " dream is, however, just as undoubted an 
absurdity. No such thing took place. The dissipation 
was, of course, always showy ; it burned much midnight 
oil ; and, in a city that had no street-lamps, and few 
police, it was free to make itself very visible in the 
darkness of every night. And when some one supposed 
to have been at home a clergyman, or when a locally 
well-known lawyer, or a prominent merchant, joined 
the young fools about a gaming-table, and also went to 
the devil, one may be sure that the most drunken eyes 
saw the fact, and that the most delirious memory pre- 
served it, to the exclusion of many less exciting and 
more important social truths. The undoubted reckless- 
ness of the society as a whole lay, however, not in the 
fact that everybody openly gambled, or did worse ; for 
not everybody was dissipated ; but the true sin of the 
community did consist in its tolerance of the open vices 
of those who chose to be vicious. Truly respectable 
men, whether clergymen or not, did not elbow their way 
to the gaming-tables ; but public opinion, for reasons 
that have often ere this appeared in these pages, was not 
stern enough towards social offenses, but believed in a 
sort of irreligious liberty, that considered every man's 
vices, however offensive and aggressive they might be 



398 CALIFORNIA. 

(short of crime), as a private concern between his own 
soul and Satan. Here was the trouble, and in this re- 
spect only was the whole San Franciscan community 
alike responsible both for the early dissipations, and for 
their inevitable consequences. 

As to the actual extent of this mischief among indi- 
viduals, the numbers of those engaged in the wilder 
dissipations cannot be estimated ; yet it may well be 
doubted whether they at any time formed more than a 
comparatively small fraction of the American inhabit- 
ants. We are, after all, a persistently serious people in 
the matter of social amusements. And in San Fran- 
cisco we had a great deal of business to do ; and we did 
it. It took up nearly all of our time. The nervous 
overstrain of this business showed itself in many other 
forms besides the tendency to be dissipated, and the fast 
men and women were, as even the annalists once or 
twice admit, after all but the froth on the turbid cur- 
rent. 

III. CONSERVATISM, CHURCHES, AND FAMILIES. 

But now for some of the more conservative forces. 
These one finds in three very well-known and common- 
place forms, namely, in the family, in the school, and in 
the church, all of which soon appear in San Francisco 
in their ordinary American dress, though just a trifle 
altered by the social disturbances of the place and the 
time. 

The not very trustworthy state census of 1852 showed 
a population in the whole State of 264,435. Of these, 
to judge from the very rough estimates made, very 
nearly four fifths were American citizens, and of those 
again the great majority were, of course, by birth Amer- 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 399 

icans. About one ninth or one tenth of the whole were 
women, and about one tenth children. 1 San Francisco, 
like all the other towns of the State, was subject to great 
fluctuations of population, but may be supposed in the 
early years to have contained, on the average, about one 
eighth of the population of the State, which again, be- 
tween 1852 and 1856, may have increased from fifty to 
eighty per cent. The proportion of women and children 
in the city was always greater than the proportion in 
the State at large, in case the southern portion is left 
out of account. 

On May 2, 1853, at a Mayday celebration, there was 
in San Francisco a procession of school children to cel- 
ebrate the occasion. 2 About one thousand children were 
in the train. Each one carried flowers ; and the sight 
was a pleasant one for San Franciscans, although it was 
by no means the first time that homeless men had been 
reminded of the presence of happy homes in their 
midst. There had been, as we remember, families and 
children even in Yerba Buena, and the gold excitement 
had not killed them. A certain pioneer absurdity, for- 
merly frequently repeated, which tells how, at a time 
during the early golden days, there was just One Lady 
in San Francisco, and she a new-comer, who was rev- 
erently, silently, and sentimentally worshiped by the 
vast, rude, and drunken throngs about her, must, of 
course, be dismissed to oblivion, along with that other 

1 Compare Tuthill, p. 357 ; Annals, p. 505 ; and the official summary 
of the census, reported by the secretary of state to the governor, in 
January, 1853. With this summary of the census of 1852 that pub- 
lished as an appendix to the United States census returns of the Sev- 
enth National Census does not quite agree, and the details are plain- 
ly much confused in the returns. 

2 See Annals, p. 447. May 1 came that year on Sunday. 



400 CALIFORNIA. 

scandalous assertion that in the early days there were 
no ladies in San Francisco at all. In fact, there were 
several good women at the outset, and many later. 

These good women and children needed churches and 
schools, while good husbands and fathers joined in the 
wish. In September, 1849, when the street-preacher, 
the strong-hearted " Father " Taylor, entered the har- 
bor on board a crowded vessel from the Atlantic coast, 
he heard, indeed, from a man who came out to the ship 
before they landed, strange and boastful stories about 
the jolly degeneracy of the place. But he failed, on 
landing, to verify in all respects these tales. The in- 
formant declared the gamblers to be the aristocracy 1 of 
San Francisco. As for religion, there had indeed been 
a church, but that had been turned into a jail, he be- 
lieved ; at all events he knew of only one preacher of re- 
cent standing in town ; but that one was now a gambler. 2 
The good Taylor found, however, upon landing, that 
what he humorously calls this informant's " ecclesiastical 
history " was, on the whole, false. The old school-house 
on the Plaza, once used for religious meetings, was in- 
deed now a jail ; but there were other places of worship. 
Taylor had, indeed, a little trouble in finding Methodists. 
He at last found that " Brother White," who lived " in 
the woods " (that is, among the dwarf oaks and the 

1 William Taylor's California Life Illustrated (New York, 1858), 
p. 16. 

2 With such stories the early Californians of a certain sort amused 
themselves continually. Little dependence can be placed in any such 
gossip, whether about San Francisco or about any other place. The 
New York Evening Post correspondent, above cited, had heard of a 
Methodist parson who was now a bar-tender. As a fact, the early 
California clergymen were on the whole very remarkably faithful, in- 
telligent, laborious, and devout. One would have suffered sadly with- 
out them. 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 401 

shrubbery), on Washington Street near Powell, had a 
little cloth and board house where he held Methodist 
" class-meetings " and prayer-meetings " on Sundays, 
with a " class " of twenty. Taylor himself set to work 
busily to prepare a church for his denomination. Reso- 
lutely he crossed the Bay, toiled in the redwoods behind 
San Antonio creek, cut and hewed his own lumber, and 
then, carrying it to San Francisco, helped build his own 
place of worship. It was ready by October 8, 1849. 

But this remarkably energetic fashion of preparing 
the way of the Lord, and of laying the axe at the root 
of the tree, did not, after all, result in building the first 
San Francisco church. That first one was Rev. O. C. 
Wheeler's Baptist church, built in the summer of 1849, 
before Taylor's arrival. And already in that summer 
and autumn there existed several other church organ- 
izations in San Francisco, 1 namely, Rev. T. Dwight 
Hunt's pioneer union organization, formed in 1848, 
Rev. Albert Williams's " First Presbyterian Church," 
which for some time dwelt in tents, and Rev. Dr. Yer 
Mehr's Episcopal organization, which had its beginnings 
in this first autumn. The Mission church had to suf- 
fice for Catholic communicants until 1851, when the 
first Catholic church appeared in the town proper. 

The early relations of the Protestant pioneer pastors 
with one another were of the most cordial character. 
And their little groups of communicants were both ear- 
nest and active. Out of this pastoral fellowship and 
this devotion of the laymen sprang the numerous early 
church charities that the Annalists mention. 2 As for 

1 See more details in the records given in the Annals, p. 687, sqq. 

2 See also Kev. Albert Williams, Pioneer Pastorate and Times (San 
Francisco, 1879) p. 63, sq. 

26 



402 CALIFORNIA. 

the place that these churches occupied in the commu- 
nity, there can be no doubt that, however the numbers 
in the early churches might compare with those in the 
gambling saloons, the spirit of the new community was 
at least as well represented by the former as by the 
latter. For if the saloons represented its diseases, these 
stood for its health. " Father " Taylor delights to tell 
how the most aggressive of his street-preaching under- 
takings always received, if not active support, then at 
least quietly friendly sufferance from the gamblers that 
he was attacking. There was from the first the charac- 
teristic American feeling prevalent that churches were a 
good and sober element in the social order, and that one 
wanted them to prosper, whether one took a private and 
personal interest in any of them or not. The religious 
coldness of a large number who at home would have 
seemed to be devout did not make the progress of the 
churches in California less sure, nor their value as so- 
cially conservative forces less generally recognized. 

Rev. Albert Williams mentions, in a passage of the 
book just cited, 1 the delight of being able to address 
the vigorous young men of early San Francisco. The 
San Franciscans, when they went to church at all, were, 
he declares, uncommonly inspiring audiences, because 
they were so manly, attentive, and intelligent. In the 
manuscript that I have previously cited, as furnished to 
me from diary and recollection by my mother, I find, 
amid numerous other reflections on the early social con- 
ditions (reflections that have throughout much influenced 
my comments), an account of the first time when she 
herself attended church in San Francisco, in the early 
months of 1850. The journey across the " plains," and 

1 Page 141. 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 403 

a few troubled months in the mines and at Sacramento, 
had led my father, after the great flood at the latter 
place, to come with my mother and her child to the 
Bay. The building where she thus first attended church 
services she found larger than she had expected, and 
well filled, although she saw but six or eight women 
present. What especially aroused her interest in the 
audience was this splendid group of ardent, young, 
thoughtful, and manly faces, all so full of deep and rev- 
erent attention to the services. The thing was no com- 
monplace affair to them. It meant home-like and relig- 
ious associations, aroused thus afresh in their minds in 
the midst of a sordid and weary land. She saw in their 
countenances an " intensity of earnestness " that made 
her involuntarily " thank God for making so grand a 
being as man." It seems worth while thus to add to 
the possibly biased statement of the pioneer preacher 
this impression that was received at her first church- 
attendance in San Francisco by my mother, as a mere 
listener and a stranger. 

This use of my mother's manuscript leads me to pass 
from the topic of the churches to record a few of her 
impressions of the early social and family life of San 
Francisco, as seen from the point of view of a dweller 
within doors. She passed a considerable time in 1850 
in a little circle of San Francisco families that were held 
together mainly by those ties of social and religious 
sympathy that might be supposed most effective at such 
a moment, and in the midst of such exciting conditions. 
Of the outer world she had, of course, to see and to hear 
a great deal ; and her account of this is much what one 
might expect from what one otherwise knows, save that 
she had occasion to hear of some particular instances 



404 CALIFORNIA. 

of great business undertakings, speculations, and fail- 
ures, that it might be amusing to recount in these pages 
if there were only left space. But one must pass to so- 
cial life proper. 

Every one has heard how, in early San Francisco 
life, the family ties seemed sometimes almost as weak 
as the families were rare. Divorces were in proportion 
far too numerous and easy. Some men seemed to prize 
their wives the less because of the very fact that there 
were in the country so few wives to prize. Of all this 
the early papers make frequent complaint, and the early 
travelers frequent mention, although the facts are also 
often much exaggerated. The causes, however, of this 
too general disrespect for the most significant relations 
of life, my mother seemed to see as rather deep-lying. 
In the new land, namely, to speak of the matter first 
from the side of the women concerned themselves, one's 
acquaintances could not always be strictly chosen, nor 
one's conduct absolutely determined by arbitrary rules. 
One had to adapt one's self to many people, to tolerate, 
in some people with whom one was thrown, many oddi- 
ties, and much independence, so long as the essentials 
of good behavior and good purposes remained. The 
difficulty, however, for certain well-meaning but foolish 
among the younger women, who found themselves in 
the midst of all this new life, was to sacrifice some of 
the non-essentials of social intercourse, as they knew 
them, without sacrificing anything either of their own 
personal dignity, or of their true delicacy of feeling. 
Many such women failed to solve the problem. Little 
by little they sacrificed this or that petty prejudice, 
which dignity would have counseled them to observe ; 
and so erelong they were socially more or less distinctly 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 405 

and disastrously careless, both as to behavior and as to 
companionship. But such mild degeneration is not an 
element of strength in the union of a family. Men 
often prized their wives less because the wives grew 
thus foolishly light-hearted, and were, on the whole, less 
to be prized. Nor was there a lack of fault on the 
other side. If women fell into these unguarded habits, 
such as the custom of letting men who chanced to be 
their friends, and chanced to be lucky, give them, with 
careless Californian generosity, expensive presents on 
every occasion when these friends had made some new 
success in business, and if such " Californian " ways, 
however innocent in their beginning, led to misunder- 
standings in the end : still, on the other hand, husbands 
who found themselves absorbed in business rivalry with 
a community of irresponsible bachelors, and who accord- 
ingly lamented the hostages that they themselves had 
long since given to fortune, often neglected without 
reason their families, and so in time lost the affection 
that they had ceased to deserve. In short, as my 
mother (who, in the course of a few years, had occasion 
to hear of or to see a number of these broken California 
families) judged the too general trouble, it was one that 
might be said to lie in the lonesomeness of the families 
of a new land. The family grows best in a garden with 
its kind. Where family-life does not involve healthy 
friendships with other families, it is apt to be injured 
by unhealthy if well-meaning friendships with wander- 
ers. The lonesome man, far away from home, seeking 
in all innocence of heart the kindly and elevating com- 
panionship of some good woman, the good-humored 
young woman, enjoying in all her innocence also the 
flattery and the exaggerated respect of a community of 



406 CALIFORNIA. 

bachelors, the foolish husband, feeling his wife more or 
less a burden, in a country where so few of his friends 
and of his rivals have such burdens to hamper them ; 
such are the too familiar figures of social life in a new 
land. From their relationships spring the curious un- 
happinesses that at length come to mar the lives of so 
many good, easy souls. Add to the picture the figure 
of the bachelor-friend aforesaid, venturing not only to 
flatter, but, in his rudely courteous or in his more gently 
diffident manner, to comfort the neglected wife, with 
honest words, and with kindly services ; and one sees 
how much in danger, under such circumstances, may be 
the true interests of all family-life. If one wants a high 
average of domestic peace and of moral health, he must 
not look for it too hopefully in the domestic lives of 
the most among those who ought to prize one another 
highest, namely, wedded companions, in very new coun- 
tries. These people may indeed be wise, and find all 
that you could wish for in the way of true happiness ; 
but too many of them will be seen to be blind to the 
worth of their privileges, just because these happen, at 
that place and time, to be so rare. Such then was my 
mother's general observation. But she saw many cases 
indeed of people who were sensible enough to know 
when they were happy, and to live in the best of do- 
mestic relations. Such families were, in their place, the 
salvation of this restless and suffering social order. 
For about them clustered the hopes for the future of 
society. In them were reared the better-trained chil- 
dren. In them careless wanderers saw the constant re- 
minders of the old home. To increase their numbers, 
to quiet their fears, to satisfy their demands, men were 
willing to make vast sacrifices. It was indeed largely 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 407 

in the hope of seeing erelong many such families flock- 
ing to the State, that those men who felt their own in- 
terests in the country to be fairly permanent were will- 
ing to toil for order in the arduous fashions exemplified 
by the great vigilance committees. 

IV. POPULAR JUSTICE IN FEBRUARY, 1851. 

Not the same judgment, by any means, can be passed 
upon the San Francisco vigilance committees of 1851 
and 1856 as we have already passed upon the popular 
justice of the miners. In some respects, to be sure, 
there is an unfortunate likeness. Both in the mines 
and in San Francisco carelessness had led to a destruc- 
tive general license of mischief-makers. In both places 
the men of sense were forced at last to attend to their 
social duties. But in the mines there was, for a while, 
a far too general, a very absurd and wicked trust in 
lynch law as the best expression, under the circum- 
stances, of the popular hatred of crime. San Francisco, 
as a community, never went so far as this. In that 
city lynch law was, both in 1851 and in 1856, the ex- 
pression of a pressing desire so to reform the social 
order that lynch law should no longer be necessary. 
What the success of these efforts was, we have to see 
from the facts. 

The condition of society that so well expressed itself 
in the fire of May 4, 1851, had, nearly three months 
earlier, led to the first of the greater outbursts of popu- 
lar indignation at crime, 1 that of February, 1851. On 

1 The affair of the "Hounds," in 1849, generally mentioned as the 
first important case of popular justice in San Francisco, is a typical 
illustration of the short and easy methods of the early golden days, 
but it is otherwise comparatively insignificant. A company of young 
rascals, having paraded the streets on a number of occasions, under 



408 CALIFORNIA. 

the 19th of February a merchant named Jansen was 
assaulted and robbed in his own shop by two men, who 
came in the evening, pretending to be customers. The 
crime, though not the first or the worst of its sort, 
seemed especially atrocious to the community, which 
chanced to be in a sensitive mood. The " Alta," usu- 
ally, in those days, a very sober and sensible paper, be- 
came for the moment a trifle over-excited. Nobody, 
says the editor, a day or two later, is secure, even in his 
own dwelling. And the ruffians, if arrested at all, are 
never punished. " How many murders have been com- 
mitted in this city within a year ! And who has been 
hung or punished for the crime ? Nobody. How many 
men shot and stabbed, knocked down and bruised ; and 
who has been punished for it ? How many thefts and 
arsons, robberies, and crimes of a less note ; and where 
are the perpetrators ? Gentlemen at large, citizens, free 
to reenact their outrages." Under these circumstances, 
however, who is to blame ? The " Alta," with an amus- 
ing unwisdom, proceeds to make the lawyers who defend 
criminals the first persons responsible for the trouble. 
Such a lawyer is a "father to the thief and robber, aye, 
to the murderer, even." " We cannot see how any hon- 
est man, knowing or having reason to believe another 
guilty, can ransack heaven and earth for arguments for 
shielding him from punishment." Next to the lawyers, 

the name of the " Hounds " and under the pretense of being a society 
for mutual protection, made at last their long tolerated disorderly 
behavior intolerable. They began violent assaults on the Chilians 
present in the town, and were promptly suppressed. Their leaders 
were tried and convicted by a popular court, wherein two judges (of 
whom Gwin, then just arrived, was one) were appointed by the peo- 
ple, "to assist the alcalde." The prisoners were then sentenced to 
long terms of imprisonment, which, of course, were never inflicted 
upon them. See Annals, p. 552, sqq. 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 409 

the courts and the police are most to blame. " The 
city would be infinitely better off without them. They 
are no terror to evil-doers." And so, finally : " We 
deprecate lynch law, but the outraged public," etc., etc. 

Under these circumstances, the news that two men 
had been arrested as the perpetrators of this assault 
aroused the people to righteous indignation and to elo- 
quence. One of these two men was soon said to be a cer- 
tain rogue named Stuart, and notorious in the mines. On 
the 21st, the two men arrested were confronted with 
the wounded Jansen. The supposed Stuart he was said 
to have recognized at once as one of his assailants, and 
he had only a little doubt about the other prisoner. 
Accordingly when, on Saturday, the 22d, the two were 
to be brought up before the court in the city hall, for 
preliminary examination, the people 1 collected, grew 
more and more excited, read copies of a well-written 
and rather foolish hand-bill (which called upon all good 
citizens to assemble on Sunday, at two o'clock, on the 
Plaza, for the sake of somehow ridding the community 
of its robbers and murderers), and so at last, with a 
shout, " Now 's the time" rushed towards and into the 
recorder's court room, in order to seize the prisoners. 2 
But a company of militia, the " Washington Guards," 
which had been called out, and was now on parade, 
ready to defend the officers of the law, entered the 
court-room just after the first of the mob had rushed 
in, cleared the room with fixed bayonets, and so saved 
the prisoners, who were then imprisoned in the not very 
secure basement of the city hall. The guards thus 

1 "The people, in the highest sense of the term," declare the 
authors of the Annals (p. 315), and " not a mob." 

2 Weekly Alta for March 1, 1851. 



410 CALIFORNIA. 

earned many hoots and hisses, insomuch that the way- 
ward and still wholly disorganized crowd followed them 
home to their armory, challenged them to a fight, and 
were with difficulty persuaded at last to disperse. 
About dusk that evening, a more sensible and dignified 
public meeting took place near the city hall, and was 
addressed by several speakers, among them Mr. Sam 
Brannan, the lion-hearted, a man always in love with 
shedding the blood of the wicked. A committee of 
prominent citizens, of whom he was one, was appointed 
by the public meeting to consider the situation, and also 
to assist the police in guarding the accused over night ; 
and this committee's proceedings, after the greater 
meeting had adjourned, were also reported in the " Alta" 
of the next day. Mr. Brannan begged his fellow-mem- 
bers to take the chance now so kindly given them by 
fortune, and to try the prisoners themselves forthwith. 
He was tired of the law. He was " much surprised to 
hear people talk about grand juries, or recorders or 
mayors." He was " opposed to any farce in this busi- 
ness." Mr. Brannan's less enthusiastic fellows on the 
committee overruled him as to these somewhat immoral 
proposals ; but they too were not free from excitement. 
Even the moderate and cautious Mr. Macondray, a prom- 
inent merchant, and one of the committee, declared that 
no court would dare to discharge these men ; no lawyer 
would dare to plead their cause. But he very sensibly 
pointed out that a committee appointed by the sovereign 
people to guard prisoners could not well turn itself into 
a jury, and try them. 

Now, however, one serious defect and danger about 
all this ardent and sincere popular indignation against 
the two prisoners lay in the fact that the supposed 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FE AN CISCO. 411 

Stuart was really quite an innocent man, whose name 
was Burdue. He had been mistaken for the true as- 
sailant by poor Jansen, who was lying very seriously 
hurt with a concussion of the brain. The resemblance 
of the accused to the real criminal Stuart was indeed 
remarkable : but there were people in San Francisco 
who could on occasion identify the accused as an inno- 
cent man. unless indeed the popular indignation at crime 
should forbid for the moment all defense of any sup- 
posed criminals. 

Fortunately, howeyer, the general sentiment of the 
wiser men of San Francisco favored giving- the two ac- 
cused a fair chance. And therefore, when on the next 
day the people assembled once more, a no less stern but 
much more sensible spirit prevailed than on the previous 
morning. Mr. Wm. T. Coleman, later so noted in con- 
nection with both the great Vigilance Committees, came 
forward with a motion to appoint a committee to agree 
upon a plan of action, and this committee, having been 
chosen, reported that a judge and jury should be named, 
who should try the criminals at two o'clock the same day. 
This plan was submitted to the people, and adopted. 1 
The jury was appointed by popular consent. Great 
difficulty was found in getting a popular judge to serve ; 
but at last one Mr. J. F. Spence was chosen, and two 

1 Not. however, until a wicked attempt had boon made, by four 
members of the committee of the night before (/'. C, of the guard ap- 
pointed for watching the prisoner), to arouse the mob to immediate 
action by means of an incendiary hand-bill, signed by these four. The 
band-bill pretended to "report" how these four knew that there was 
no question of the guilt of the prisoners. The paper was apparently 
the work of Mr. Sam Brannan, whose name was first signed to it, the 
other names being Wm. H. Jones, E. A. King, and J. B. Huie. One 
sees thus how near the San Franciscans were led to committing a bru- 
tal crime, by reason of the noisiness of hot-headed and officious men. 



412 CALIFORNIA, 

assistant judges were appointed. The chief actors in 
the subsequent trial were thus the result of seme genu- 
ine reflection and of a careful choice, and the trial was 

therefore saved from becoming what the mob wished it 

to he, — a disorderly mock trial. 

At two o'clock the popular court was complete mas- 
ter of the situation, and met in the district court room. 
Without any resistance from the officials this time, the 
prisoners were considered as subject to the jurisdiction 
of the new tribunal, although they were not removed 
from their cells. Two lawyers, prominent through many 
later years in California as attorneys, consented to de- 
fend the prisoners, — Judge Shattuck appearing for the 
supposed Stuart, Mr. Hall McAllister for the other ; 
but counsel for the people was harder to find, regular 
attorneys declining, very naturally, to serve. Mr. Cole- 
man at length undertook the work. The jury were 
known men; and to Mr. Et S. Watson, their foreman, 
now of "Milton, Mass.. 1 am indebted for a very inter- 
esting oral account of the scene. Mr. Watson himself 
did not sympathize in any degree with the extrava- 
gances of the mob, and. as we shall see, his influence 
was ultimately used, with that of others, to save the 
prisoners. But the moment was one when the advice 
of cautious men was especially needed, and one may be 
glad that such were willing to serve. 

The trial of the supposed Stuart took precedence, and, 
as we shall see, was the only act of the tribunal. The 
testimony, as the " Alta " shows, was of two sorts. Some 
of the witnesses declared themselves able to identify this 
man as one Stuart, somewhat notorious at Sacramento 
and in the mines as a most dangerous character, and 
several times proven guilty of theft and. they said, of 



ao( • 01 utioh w san Francisco, 413 

worse. Tlio other witnesses knew only that dauseu, 
who wo remember was suffering ever sinee the assault, 
from QOncUSSlon of the brain, hail said that this nun 

Looked so much like his own assailant that there could 

be little doubt about the identity. Judge ShattUCk ably 
insisted upon the t'aet that, as the defense was the denial 
Of this man's identity with the notorious Stuart, as well 
as with the assailant of Jauscn, the cause of justice 
WOUld demand some scrutiny of the prisoner's antece- 
dents and life. Time was needed for this. And Judge 
Shattuok "had had no time to consult with the aeensed, 
to ascertain Who were his friends and acquaintances, or 

to inquire in the ease." 1 Under these circumstances, 

with a savage crowd in the conrt-room occasionally in- 
terrupting, and demanding the death of the prisoner} 

Judge Shattuok felt that his defense was somewhat 
hampered, and he bogged the jury to remember the ter- 
rible responsibility of their position. lie made some 
effort to got testimony to clear the prisoner, but the time 
allowed him was too short, and, as later appeared, the 
prisoner's few acquaintances, who, after all, were not 
exactly prominent citizens, were afraid to risk facing 
the popular tribunal and the mob, and were not easy 
to find that evening. Time wore away in wrangling 
about the case : the mob grow more and more impa- 
tient, and the counsel for the defense was frequently 
interrupted, and once or twice insulted. As Mr. Wat- 
son tells liu'. he himself was one of those on the jury 
most anxious to consider carefully the worth of Mr. 
Sanson's evidence, and he did not find it satisfying, For 
the injured man, Lying in a stupor, had only been with 
difficulty aroused to view the prisoners. In the room 
1 Alt a of February 84, In the weekly of Miuvh 1, as oiuul. 



414 CALIFORNIA. 

had been, besides these prisoners, only poor Jansen's 
own friends. What thing more natural than that, un- 
der such circumstances, the man should reply, " Yes," 
when asked if these strangers were the men who had 
hurt him ? When the jury at last retired, this doubt- 
fulness, and in fact actual worthlessness, of the testimony 
in question was strongly insisted upon by the foreman 
and two others, and, although nine of the jury were 
ready to convict, these three held out firmly, through a 
long deliberation, and after many ballotings. Much 
tumult, meanwhile, raged outside the court-room, and to 
some extent in it. The better class of citizens were 
urging the crowd to be patient ; while the crowd were 
weary and disgusted to think that, now the beautifully 
simple machinery of popular justice was once set up, it 
somehow would not run smoothly, but was subject even 
to delays. During this time it was, and after ten o'clock 
at night, that Mr. E. S. Osgood * learned that two men 
were accessible, and living down on " Long Wharf " 
(Commercial Street wharf), who could swear to the true 
identity of the prisoner, and to his whereabouts on the 
night of the assault. Before making an effort to go 
down in the thick darkness to the not very safe regions 
of Long Wharf, Mr. Osgood came forward in the court- 
room, announced his purpose, and begged the court to 
be willing to wait for the new evidence, and to admit it 
when it should come. Some one present, as Mr. Os- 
good has told me, called out, asking him who he was ; 
another thereupon shouted that this new-comer in court 

1 Now a resident of Cambridge, Mass. I have heard from him his 
own account also of the following scene, which, with his name men- 
tioned, is described more briefly in the Aha report, as cited. The two 
accounts agree so far as they refer to the same occurrences at all. 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 415 

was well known to certain present as one Osgood, a re- 
sponsible person ; a third shouted : " No, I know who 
he is, one of these scoundrels that are trying to get their 
accomplice here on free " — and hereupon some angry- 
discussion followed. Mr. Osgood gave his name and his 
business, but, as the " Alta " says, " the crowd refused 
to hear any further testimony." Yet Mr. Osgood set 
off in the darkness to find his witnesses, and, after some 
gloomy wanderings, he was successful. With some 
trouble he persuaded them to come with him to the court 
from their lodgings on Long Wharf. But before the 
return of the three, the case was for the time ended. 

At nearly midnight, namely, the jury had returned to 
court, and the foreman had reported that they could 
not agree. Mr. Watson remembers well the unpleasant 
scene presented to himself and his fellow jurymen, with 
the weary and angry crowd all about, who began to call 
for the names of the disagreeing jurors, and to shout 
" Sang them too." But the scene was not to last long. 
The good citizens present were firm, the mob had di- 
minished by reason of the lateness of the hour, the 
leaders insisted that the sovereign people, having re- 
ferred the case to a jury, must abide by its decision, 
and the people were at last induced to disperse. One 
device to pacify them seems to have been a resort to 
that great . medicine wherewith the American rids him- 
self of his dangerous social passions, just as the Aristo- 
telian spectator of tragedy purges himself of his " Pity 
and Fear." This Katharsis namely is, with the Amer- 
ican, political agitation. When Mr. Osgood returned 
with his witnesses, he found some of the recent heroes 
of popular justice loudly shouting : " Hurrah for 
Welter.' ' An impromptu political meeting had in fact 



416 CALIFORNIA. 

just been taking place, and all the good citizens who 
were still out of bed were so interested in this new mat- 
ter that Mr. Osgood with difficulty learned from them 
what had become of the prisoner. At last he heard that 
the popular tribunal had adjourned sine die, and that 
the prisoners had been left with the authorities for trial. 
And thus happily ended an affair in which the citizens 
of San Francisco had shown some of their worst as well 
as some of their best traits. A volunteer night patrol, 
organized by the merchants, thenceforth for a time aided 
the police force of the city, which was all this time small, 
poorly trained, generally neglected, and ill-paid, getting 
its wages in depreciated city scrip. 

But the great year of the popular tribunals was as yet 
only begun. The newspapers might hope that the city 
would escape the curse of popular justice, but the tem- 
per of the public made such escape impossible. One 
thing, however, was secured by the February outbreak : 
the public would be sure in time to learn from it the 
proper lesson as to the dangers of mere mob law. The 
supposed Stuart was some months later shown to be a 
rather weak, but, as to legal offenses, an innocent man. 
For the moment he escaped from San Francisco, only 
to fall a little later once more into trouble, in the inte- 
rior, by reason of his singular resemblance to the re- 
doubtable Stuart. From this trouble also he was re- 
leased through evidence produced by the very San 
Franciscans who had been so near hanging him in Feb- 
ruary. The other prisoner accused of the assault on 
Jansen was later convicted, and sentenced to the peni- 
tentiary, by a regular court. But he also was still later 
shown to be innocent, and was finally released. For 
the time, however, the mass of the citizens could not 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 417 

know how criminal might have proven the hasty meth- 
ods of the 22d and the 23d of February. When the 
committee of June was formed, with such men as the 
late foreman of the jury of February 23d in prominent 
places upon it, there was, however, a very decided effort 
made from the first to avoid every appearance of dis- 
order. That the committee was needed at all resulted, 
as said, from the temper of the public mind, which, with- 
out some serious lesson in the troublesome work of pop- 
ular justice, could not have been induced to forsake in 
any wise its over-confidence and its carelessness. 

V. THE FIRST VIGILANCE COMMITTEE. 

We study, in this book, the incidents that exhibit the 
popular character and the play of social forces, rather 
than those that have only an adventurous interest. The 
first Vigilance Committee is rich in dramatic situations, 
but, after its first formation, its history shows little 
further that is novel in the way of socially important 
undertakings. Upon its early moments alone we shall 
dwell. Absolutely necessary, in order to distinguish it 
from the more disorderly and transient committees of 
the mines, would be, of course, a careful and sober organ- 
ization. This is got, at the outset of its work, in June. 
What followed vindicated the good sense of the organi- 
zation, but throws little new light on the ethics of popu- 
lar justice. 

The fire of May 4th had rendered the public more 
sensitive, discontented and suspicious than ever ; but a 
genuine popular reform had not yet taken place. Re- 
forms must have something to date from, and two or 
three minor popular excitements, produced by attempts 
at arson or by other crimes, were not sufficient for the 
27 



418 CALIFORNIA. 

purpose. On Sunday, June 8, a very able letter ap- 
peared in the " Alta," proposing the immediate forma- 
tion of a Committee of Safety, and suggesting a plan for 
its operations. The plan as stated was admitted to be 
somewhat undigested, but was probably so strongly ex- 
pressed chiefly for the sake of arousing popular atten- 
tion. The usual complaints were made as to the social 
condition. The committee of safety was to improve mat- 
ters by boarding in time the vessels that arrived from 
Australia, and by refusing to let any doubtful charac- 
ters land from them ; while, as to the ruffians now in 
the city, ward committees of vigilance were arbitrarily 
to single them out and to warn them to leave the city 
within five days on pain of a " war of extermination," 
to be prosecuted against them. " Let us set about the 
work at once. It may be well to call a public meeting 
in the square, to organize and carry out these views. 
Without this, or some other similar plan, the evil can- 
not be remedied ; and if there is not spirit enough 
amongst us to do it, why then in God's name let the 
city be burned, and our streets flow with the blood of 
murdered men." The letter was throughout very well 
written. It is remarkable as not referring directly and 
openly to any one case before the public, and as not get- 
ting its inspiration from any one popular excitement or 
mob, and also as coming from one of the most cautious 
and conscientious of the jury at the recent trial of the 
false Stuart. 1 Some of the writer's friends guessed at 
the authorship of the letter, and at breakfast at his 

1 Namely, from the pen of Mr. R. S. Watson, who on seeing the 
Alta of that date in the file that I have used, now feels able to iden- 
tify with absolute certainty this letter as the one which he remembers 
having written at that time to the press. 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 419 

restaurant, Sunday morning, he was accosted by several 
of them and asked about the matter. The " Alta " 
itself noticed the letter approvingly ; and Mr. Watson 
had, as he says, " touched a train already laid." Others 
were on the point of a similar movement. 

A few editorial and inspired articles in the " Alta," 
on Monday and Tuesday, are the only public indica- 
tions, during those days, that anything of importance 
was going on among the citizens interested in the new 
movement. The "Alta" of Wednesday, June 11, 
brings sufficient evidence, however, both of the move- 
ment and of its first consequences. The editor re- 
marks, that morning, that mobs are indeed of no service 
in suppressing crime. But " the next affair of the kind 
will be of a different character, if we are correctly in- 
formed' in regard to certain organizations of our citizens, 
which are now and have for several days been progress- 
ing. We understand that quite a large party banded 
themselves together at the California Engine House on 
Monday night, for the purpose of punishing incendiaries 
and other criminals." The organization of the commit- 
tee had indeed been already provisionally perfected. 
Mr. Sam Brannan, with his wonted zeal, had offered 
them a room, and his offer had been accepted. Two 
taps on the engine-house bell were to call the committee 
together. The promptness of the work of organization 
showed how many besides the anonymous correspondent 
of the " Alta " had had the thoughts to which he gave 
such vigorous expression. Prominent on the committee, 
besides the two already mentioned, were Mr. Wm. T. 
Coleman, Mr. Stephen Payran, 1 Mr. S. E. Woodworth, 
and many others. 

1 Although Mr. W. T. Coleman is by popular reputation the most 



420 CALIFORNIA. 

But, as this same " Alta " of Wednesday learned 
even as it was going to press, the committee had no 
sooner organized than it had undertaken work. A 
thief, one Jenkins, a common ruffian of a very low type, 
had been detected Tuesday evening in the very act of 
burglary on Long Wharf, and, attempting to escape in 
a boat, was caught and brought back. At ten o'clock 
Tuesday night the members of the committee were 
called to their first appointed headquarters 1 (near the 
corner of Sansome and Bush streets). For two hours 
the committee were engaged in examining the case, and 
at midnight Mr. Sam Brannan announced their verdict 
to the crowd assembled outside the rooms. The crimi- 
nal, he said, was to be hanged in an hour or two on the 
Plaza. The execution took place at two. An attempt 
was made by the police on the Plaza to get Jenkins 
away from the committee, but the effort was hopeless, 
and the " old adobe," now so near its doom, did almost 
its last public service, before the June fire burned it 
down, in serving, through one of its projecting beams, 
as a gallows to hang Jenkins. 2 

prominent among the executive leaders of the first committee, Mr. W. 
W. Carpenter, writing from Petaluma, under date of March 25, 1874, 
to the Oakland Transcript, and professing to give something of the 
" secret history " of the committee, makes Mr. Payran its " chair- 
man," throughout, as well as its greatest hero. The organization of 
the committee, with a comparatively few leaders and a large rank and 
file, makes such questions about the division of honors very frequent 
in the reminiscences of various pioneers. There was, however, as to 
personal credit, no true first hero in this very honest and active com- 
pany of intelligent and able leaders. 

1 In the Annals, p. 570, erroneously put at the corner of Pine and 
Battery streets, on this occasion. 

2 Mr. Watson has given me a very interesting account of this 
whole night, for which I wish that I had more space. The weather, 
as appears both from the Alta and from his account, was unusually 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 421 

A time of feverish public excitement followed. The 
coroner's inquest implicated certain people as connected 
with the execution of Jenkins ; but the committee, in a 
very dignified publication, declared all their members, 
of whom a complete list was given, equally implicated, 
and announced their firm intention to work for the pu- 
rification of the city. This plain statement relieved the 
public mind. The committee was no merely secret or- 
ganization ; and its members were among the best-known 
men of the city. It plainly expressed the general senti- 
ment. The question, why then could not this honest 
general sentiment have expressed itself before, in the 
selection of good and efficient officers ? — now came too 
late. Once for all, only a glimpse of the terrible scenes 
of lynch law could make this public serious. And so 
the committee was indeed a necessity. Here, in fact, is 
one of the heretofore frequently mentioned cases where 
popular justice was not in itself sin, but was the confes- 
sion of the past sin of the whole community. 

The work during June, July, and August was both im- 
pressive and important. That it frightened the rogues, 
sent many of them away, and hanged three more be- 
sides Jenkins, is, as the reader now sees, the least of its 
merits. More important was the manifest sobriety and 
justice of the methods. The committee caught, tried, 
and hanged the true Stuart, who made at the last a full 
but untrustworthy confession. But by doing this piece 
of work the committee accomplished an act of justice to 
the poor fellow who had been mistaken for Stuart in 
February. He, namely, was now in jail in the interior, 

clear for a June night in San Francisco, and the moon was very bril- 
liant. The popular excitement all night was of the greatest, but of 
course the general feeling fully supported the committee. 



422 CALIFORNIA, 

under sentence of death, all because of another conse- 
quence of his resemblance to Stuart. And the com- 
mittee, when the truth had once become known, made 
every effort to save him and to set him free, and suc- 
ceeded. Not mere vengeance, then, but justice, was the 
obvious motive of its acts. In August the committee 
came nearly to an open collision with the authorities, 
who, at an unguarded moment, rescued from the rooms 
of the committee two of its condemned criminals, Whit- 
taker and McKenzie. The committee, however, some 
days later, by a skillful and effective surprise, recap- 
tured these two, and hanged them at once, all without 
more than the mere show of violence towards the police. 
Successfully, then, the risk of an open fight with officers 
of the law was overcome. But the lesson of this was a 
serious one. Popular justice in San Francisco would, it 
was plain, involve fearful risks of an open collision be- 
tween the officers and the people, and would be a great 
waste of social energy. Why not gain in future, through 
devotion to the duties of citizenship, what one thus in 
the end would have to struggle for in some way, per- 
chance at the expense of much blood ? 

When the committee at last ceased its activity, this 
lesson was in everybody's mind. That the lesson was 
not more permanently taken to heart by San Francis- 
cans is indeed unfortunate. Too many of the citizens 
still felt themselves wanderers on the face of the earth. 
But at all events a good beginning had been made in 
righteousness. 

VI. SOCIAL CORRUPTION AND COMMERCIAL DISASTER. 

The years 1852 and 1853, and especially the latter, 
were in San Francisco years of rapid growth and of 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 423 

great general prosperity. The year 1854, however, 
marks an important era in San Francisco social evolu- 
tion. It was the year in which began the first great 
financial depression of California. Individual fortunes 
had suffered in all sorts of ways, but the general sol- 
vency of the mercantile community had persisted. At 
last, however, continuous over-confidence in the rapid 
development of the wealth of the country led to the 
natural result. The production of the mines began to 
fall off, immigration decreased, many people left the 
land, the consumption of food diminished, interest and 
rents declined in San Francisco, and thirty per cent, of 
the warehouses were left empty. 1 This second stage of 
commercial life is universal in new countries, only the 
swiftness and the particular conditions of the calamity 
varying from place to place. And one who has grown 
up in new communities always listens with amusement 
to the enthusiasm of sanguine investors in the enter- 
prises of some just settled portion of our territory, 
when they declare that the first stage of the life of the 
newly prosperous region is demonstrably only a faint in- 
dication of the continuous and unceasing future growth 
of its wealth. For, as the lifelong dweller in new coun- 
tries knows, the enthusiasm of these early investors is as 
ruinous to them as it is valuable for the new country. 
Their ideas are indeed, in one sense, well founded. 
What they hope for is certain to come in time, only for 
others, and not in general for them. The evolution of 
the new land will not be what they think, a steady 
growth in wealth. The first great commercial crisis of 
its history will be, in proportion to its wealth, the worst 
of all ; and these sanguine investors will be destroyed 
1 J. S. Hittell's History of San Francisco, p. 217. 



424 CALIFORNIA. 

like flies in autumn. The second period of its growth, 
the winter time of this great depression, when all but 
the very strongest of those early investors have become 
poor as church mice, is the true time for a cautious, hard- 
working, and shrewd man to make his appearance in the 
land. He will be wiser than his predecessors, and far 
less extravagant. He will buy at low prices their half- 
abandoned property, and in later years they will bit- 
terly reproach him, instead of themselves, for the wrong 
that gave him a chance to reap what they had sown. 
This law of the almost universal failure of the pioneers 
of a new country was well exemplified in San Fran- 
cisco. 

The law is a beneficent one ; for the interests of pio- 
neers are at first much narrower than the true and his- 
torical interests of the country that they seek to subject 
to their private schemes. " Something of the decay of 
business in the city," well observes Mr. J. S. Hittell, 1 
" must be attributed to the growth of agriculture. Many 
of the immigrants of 1852 had gone to farming, and 
they were joined by thousands of farmers in the next 
year, so that there was a large increase in the produc- 
tion of grain and vegetables, and a correspondent de- 
cline in the quantity of flour imported, in the number of 
ships needed, and in the profit of consignees, warehouse- 
men, jobbers, and draymen in the city." But all this, 
of course, meant the final advantage of the whole coun- 
try, San Francisco included. 

The immediate consequence of the crisis was the rev- 
elation of much social corruption that had been grow- 
ing, but that had been previously hidden. People had 
boasted of the wild dissipations of 1849 and 1850, f or- 
1 History of San Francisco, loc. tit. 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 425 

getting that all these dissipations had seemed so note- 
worthy just because they were not characteristic of the 
real temperament of the people, and were a transient 
and inflamed symptom of the unnatural excitements to 
which the more weak and foolish of the young men 
yielded. But now this wilder dissipation had passed 
into the background of popular attention. Nobody any 
longer called the gambling-halls respectable. 1 The 
boastful sinners of the earlier days had become willing 
to behave in a more commonplace fashion. But the 
sins that men boast of are never their worst. What 
San Francisco had not boasted of being able to produce 
was sin such as was represented by the distinguished 
swindler and forger, Henry Meiggs, whose business un- 
dertakings, begun early in the city's history, culminated 
in his crimes and in his flight, in the autumn of 1854. 
Californians had been supposed, above all things, before 
those days of 1854, to discourage and despise under- 
hand dealings and duplicity of every sort. The Annal- 
ists boasted in their book of the commercial integrity of 

1 Gambling continued to be licensed in San Francisco until 1855, 
but long before that time met with steadily increasing condemnation. 
The San Francisco Herald of April 7, 1852, shows the view generally 
taken of these gambling-halls at that time. They still constitute a 
" prominent feature of life in San Francisco," but "public opinion in 
the main is opposed to their existence, and they are tolerated for no 
other reason, that we know of, than that they are charged heavily for 
licenses." They abound, continues the editor, all along Commercial 
Street, and on Long Wharf, at the foot of that street. Almost all of 
them are owned by foreigners. The business, however, is "not so 
extensively followed as it was last year." " Persons of respectability 
and standing seldom visit the saloons nowadays for play," although 
at one time many such persons used to do so. " The public are be- 
coming more and more opposed" to the business "every day." By 
the end of 1855 the Bulletin condemns the gamblers as among the 
worst elements of society. 



426 CALIFORNIA. 

the city in even its wildest days ; and, indeed, the av- 
erage integrity of the early merchants was high. But 
pioneer recklessness has as its correlate an extravagant 
tendency to hero-worship. The good fellow is easily 
adored in a new city, — all the more easily because one 
has had no means to judge of his weaknesses by means 
of a lifelong acquaintance. The same general care- 
lessness that tends to corrupt the morally weaker mem- 
bers of pioneer society expresses itself by trusting ex- 
travagantly any clever man whose manners are pleasing. 
The trust gives him more than his share of power, and 
the lack of public spirit in the community gives him a 
chance to abuse his privileges. And so San Francisco 
produced Meiggs, and was responsible for him and his 
tribe, as much as for the gambling-halls ; perhaps more 
still. 

Meiggs was early a general favorite : a man shrewd, 
generous, and speculative. He was a lumber-merchant, 
who, as such, profited, of course, by the growth as well 
as by the occasional partial destruction of the early city. 
He became deeply interested in developing the city in 
the direction of his own wharf, at North Beach, where 
land was cheap, and where land-titles were compara- 
tively unclouded. In connection with this work he 
found a place in the city council ; a body which, in the 
early days, best represented the errors of the commu- 
nity, being wasteful and selfish where it was not dis- 
honest. Meiggs himself entered it with honest inten- 
tions, no doubt, and secured the passage of numerous 
ordinances for the benefit of his part of the city. But 
his undertakings grew on his hands, and his debts in- 
creased as rapidly. He borrowed all that he could on 
his own security, and then began a bold enterprise, 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 427 

namely, borrowing on the city's security without au- 
thority. His method of accomplishing this was as cour- 
ageous as it was characteristic of the place and time. 
The city, as we know, was then and for years after- 
wards deeply in debt for many vast and usually needless 
outlays. For its genuine expenses it required, mean- 
while, much money, and, in place of that, was pleased to 
increase its debt by paying its monthly bills in warrants, 
which were worth in the market some fifty or sixty per 
cent, of their face value, and which were, in fact, later 
mostly repudiated. The warrants were prepared by 
filling out blanks supplied to the controller in book 
form, 1 which were made valid by the signatures of the 
mayor and controller. These warrants, according to 
the since current story, used, in a large number of cases, 
to be signed in advance, in blank, for the convenience 
of the officers, who could thus more rapidly fill out the 
blanks for each new creditor. Now, Meiggs, as a city 
father, as a well-known and responsible citizen, and as a 
man largely interested in large city contracts, had fre- 
quent, easy, and un watched access to the offices and 
books of the municipal corporation, — a freedom which, 
surely, nobody ought to regard with disapproval, since 
Meiggs was such a good fellow. Therefore, when cau- 
tious investors hesitated to lend more on Meiggs's real 
estate, and when they began to reflect that a man so 
much involved as he would surely carry down all his in- 
dorsers with him in case he fell, the good Meiggs was 
now ready with a presumably trustworthy collateral secu- 
rity, namely, with numerous city warrants, valued at fifty 

1 See, on this matter, the account of Meiggs's career, in J. S. Hit- 
tell, op. cit., pp. 218, sqq., especially pp. 220 and 221. Hittell's ac- 
count is an excellent one, and needs only a little to supplement it. 



428 CALIFORNIA. 

per cent., — warrants that he was understood to have 
received from the city in connection with the vast con- 
tracts in which he was interested. These securities had 
a foundation quite independent of Meiggs's solvency, 
and the cautious lenders joyously received them as col- 
lateral. 1 For months nobody thought of inquiring at 
the controller's office for proof of the value of these 
certificates, for they were of well-known appearance, 
and were not interest-bearing ; 2 and so, with the fall of 
real estate, in 1854, Meiggs became more and more 
involved, and his use of city securities became more and 
.more important to him. His courage was equal even 
to forging promissory notes, and detection then erelong 
became imminent. Accordingly, Meiggs quietly stocked 
a staunch little ship with provisions, took some of his 
friends and his brother aboard, and sailed, one day in 
October, 1854, out of the Golden Gate, and vanished. 
Then, of course, his failure and flight were at once an- 
nounced. The more cautious creditors took their col- 
lateral to the city offices for examination, and were 
overwhelmed to learn that their city paper was forged 
and worthless. The signatures might be genuine, but 
the certificates were not. 

There were reasons why the public never learned 
just how much the energetic Meiggs had stolen. He 
never came back, and many people who lost by him felt 
henceforth a certain delicacy about explaining their 
relations with him. For the moment, however, Meiggs 
was regarded as an exemplary rascal, and men won- 
dered how deep into the business life of San Francisco 

1 See the humorous article in the Pioneer for January, 1855, vol. ii. 
p. 16, sqq., where Meiggs's exploits are duly celebrated. 

2 Hittell, loc. cit. 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 429 

this sort of • corruption had eaten. If Meiggs, people 
added, had only been content with cheating his bank- 
ers, one could have forgiven him ; but, as report in- 
sisted, he had cheated his washerwoman. That, men 
declared, was too bad, even for California. 1 But, as 
they felt, he was, after all, only a remarkable instance 
of an evil that was far too common. For one thing, 
there were no sufficient public safeguards against such 
rascality. San Francisco was still without any very 
efficient police, and especially without any detective po- 
lice. 2 If violence was no longer so common, the crimes 
of skill were directly encouraged by the whole condition 
of society. The just cited writer in the " Pioneer " 
says of the state of affairs, referring especially to frauds 
in commercial matters (vol. ii. p. 327) : " Each day has 
its tale of depravity. We appeal ... to the tale that 
is told from man to man, each day, in the public streets. 
... Is it not manifest to all that the cause of this con- 
tinued flood of crime is the uncertainty of punishment, 
— nay, the almost certainty of escape ? " And, on p. 
330, the same writer, after discussing the apathy of 
prosecuting attorneys and of other public officials as one 
great evil of the times, goes on to enumerate some of 
the sorts of greater offenders from whom the commu- 
nity is suffering : '* Such are those who influence the 
time, place, and manner of the acts of public officers, so 
as to reap a benefit therefrom ; who get contracts with 
the State and city by corrupting legislation, . . . mis- 
use the public securities intrusted to their care, . . . 

1 Pioneer, loc. cit., p. 17. J. S. Hittell, loc. cit., erroneously puts 
Meiggs's flight in September. See the Pioneer, vol. ii. p. 297. 

2 See, in the Pioneer, vol. ii. pp. 321, sqq., an interesting article on 
"A Detective Police." Meiggs's crimes and escape are mentioned as 
a good example of the easy lot of a clever criminal in San Francisco. 



430 CALIFORNIA, 

corrupt judges and juries. . . . These great crimes, 
which have so long prospered amongst us, leave us no 
security. Life, liberty, and property have no safety 
when the tribunals are corrupted, and the poor man 
hides his little store and flees with it to other lands." 
Thus opens the era of commercial ill-feeling and suspi- 
cion in San Francisco, — an era that lasted until after 
the great Vigilance Committee. Its especial exponent 
in the newspaper press began to appear in 1855, as the 
" San Francisco Bulletin." Not so much violence, as 
corruption, was now the enemy. 

Of Meiggs it remains to be said here only that the 
rest of his career showed, in a fresh way, how com- 
pletely the life of new countries is sometimes given over 
to Satan, to vex the inhabitants thereof with diabolical 
miracles. Even the commonest laws of moral evolution 
seem, namely, occasionally suspended in such lands, so 
far as concerns, not the communities indeed, but certain 
individuals. And thus the weaklings are tempted by 
the sight of rogues who let the viper of wickedness 
sting them, but somehow do not fall down dead, as they 
ought. Capricious fortune saves some rogues, not 
merely from physical penalties, but apparently from the 
most inevitable of their well-earned moral penalties. 
Such a diabolical miracle was permitted to be wrought 
in the case of Meiggs. In his home of refuge in South 
America, this wretch, namely, later became a distin- 
guished and useful citizen, a great investor, a trustwor- 
thy financier, a man much prized by the government 
and people of Peru for his skill, for his amiability, and 
for his generosity. He took advantage of his success 
to satisfy in some fashion (according to Mr. Hittell, by 
buying up at reduced rates his old notes) the claims of 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 431 

his San Francisco creditors, who benevolently forgave 
him all in after years. The real mischief that he had 
wrought he could, of course, never make good ; but it 
was granted him to die as an honored man, — surely a 
most vile caprice of fortune, however much Meiggs's 
own fine energies may have contributed to the result. 
That he ever truly repented does in no wise appear. 
If he had repented, he would have come back to Cali- 
fornia and gone to jail, where he belonged. 

By 1855 we see the fruits both of the aforesaid natu- 
ral causes and of all this commercial and social corrup- 
tion, in the great failures of February, and in the great 
business depression of the rest of the year. Page, Ba- 
con & Co. and Adams & Co., two of the greatest of the 
city business houses, the one a banking-house, the other 
both a banking and an express company, failed, and 
carried with them numerous lesser firms. 1 The finan- 
cial condition of the municipality was meanwhile grow- 
ing worse and worse. The message of the mayor, 
March 12, 1855, 2 showed the liabilities of the city in- 
curred since May 1, 1851, to sum up as $1,959,000, 
the deficit for one year past being some $840,000. The 
house of Page, Bacon & Co. resumed payment March 
29, only to close its doors anew and finally on May 2. 
A long struggle over the assets of Adams & Co. began 
with the failure of that house, and this was to last for 
years, involving, and in the end destroying, the personal 
reputations of a good many people. The city, later in 

1 The sequence of the events of the crisis appears in the Pioneer's 
"Monthly Summary," vol. iii. p. 238. Contemporary with the crisis 
was the excitement in San Francisco about the " Kern River Mines," 
a typical instance of the early California mining excitements. This 
one was especially ill-founded and transient. 

2 Pioneer, vol. iii. p. 368. 



432 CALIFORNIA. 

the year, having been authorized by statute to examine 
through a commission its floating debt, and to fund the 
properly incurred and legally valid portion thereof, 
manage to repudiate $1,737,000 of its warrants, recog- 
nizing as its valid indebtedness only some $322,000. 
This act, either an appalling confession of corruption, or 
a most disgraceful repudiation (or more probably both), 
stands happily alone of its kind in San Francisco his- 
tory. 1 All these things, however, were the work of the 
people at large, who had tolerated and encouraged sin 
so long, and who now selfishly tried to shirk its penalties. 

Vn. THE NEW AWAKENING OF CONSCIENCE. 

The conscience of San Francisco, however, began to 
speak through the pages of the new paper, the " Bulle- 
tin," in the autumn of 1855. A perfectly clear or a 
very highly organized conscience it was not yet, but it 
was stern, manly, cruel and unsparing towards its own 
past lapses, courageous, hopeful, and ardent. The mes- 
senger who was inspired to speak its words was in no 
old-fashioned sense a prophet, although fate was pleased 
to make him a martyr. He was a very plain and pro- 
saic man, who obviously learned from his new task, as 
he went on, even more than he taught to others, and 
who, for the rest, was not free from selfishness in the 
conduct of his mission ; since, as is plain, he not infre- 
quently felt a good deal of personal spite against the 
public sinners that he assailed. His weapons, moreover, 
were the dangerous ones of personal journalism. His 
methods forced him to be always ready with a fresh 
denunciation of somebody, and he was sure, therefore, to 
commit much injustice, if he continued long upon his 
1 J. S. Hittell, op. cit., p. 227. Pioneer, vol. iv. p. 309. 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 433 

path. But for the time he quickly gained the support 
of the respectable classes, because the cause that he 
pleaded was so much above all his own personal weak- 
nesses and errors, and because the need of plain speech 
was so pressing. James King, " of William," as he, 
following a practice occasionally found in new commu- 
nities, called himself, by way of distinction from other 
Kings, had been engaged in banking, and had been 
ruined by the late panic. The field of San Francisco 
newspapers was crowded, but still nobody had made a 
business of preaching concrete righteousness in short 
and readable paragraphs, with broad-faced type used 
for the headings, and with plenty of personal applica- 
tions scattered all through the editorial columns. To 
do this was King's opportunity. He began his enter- 
prise in October, 1855, without at first any peculiarity 
of outer form to mark his journal, save its very small 
size. Three successive enlargements rapidly followed, 1 
with his success, and by the opening of the new year 
one finds his style, his form of typography, and his 
plans of battle fully developed. King loved to gather 
around him a little cloud of correspondents, both friends 
and foes, to assign them a column or two at one side, 
and then to discourse to them in his manly and vigorous 
way in " leaders " and " notes." Plainly the one edi- 
tor was nearly always speaking, and King's name stood 
at the head of the first editorial column, yet he per- 
sisted in his merely amusing editorial " we." His 
correspondents addressed him plainly by name, and 

1 The file that I have before me, that of Harvard College Library, 
opens with number 20, October 30, 1855, and is nearly continuous un- 
til late in 1856. I know of no enlargement of earlier date than Octo- 
ber 30. 

28 



434 CALIFORNIA. 

wrote approval, entreaty, expostulation or objurgation, 
as the spirit might move. King encouraged them very 
frequently to say just what they thought. Occasionally 
a gambler wrote to defend his profession, or an ortho- 
dox man, full of interest in this worthy, but plainly un- 
regenerate editor, wrote to beg King to save his own 
poor soul, while the lamp still held out to burn. King 
enjoyed ail such letters ; and they all alike made his 
paper sell. He had a thoughtful and speculative vein 
in his mind also, and sometimes touched on deeper 
problems. 

Meanwhile, it was his life to assail official, business, 
and social corruption of every sort, and that not imper- 
sonally. Duels he declined to enter upon, once for 
all ; and the rights of the public to a plain denunciation 
of the rascals were his daily insistence. Yet this work, 
honestly undertaken, could not rest with personal quar- 
rels. King had to assail the public apathy and careless- 
ness that permitted this sort of thing. And that assault 
constitutes the permanently valuable element in his 
work. Nobody cares now how far King's personal 
hatreds were well founded. It was his denunciation of 
the whole social condition that was significant. 

And serious was indeed the corruption that he talked 
of so plainly. In forsaking the wilder old dissipations, 
the community had still kept the feeling that respecta- 
bility was an affair of the heart for each individual. 
Public respectability, such for instance as demanded the 
banishing of disreputable houses from the principal 
dwelling-house streets of the city, was nobody's concern. 
But King made it somebody's concern. 1 He very 

1 A correspondent, November 8, 1855, complains of a most notice- 
able and offensive establishment just about to be opened, "situated in 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 435 

plainly and by name assailed the city officials whose 
private and illegal connivance was especially and de- 
monstrably to blame for these things, and promised to 
publish the names of the proprietors and lessors of every 
such house, if the nuisance were not abated. " It 's no 
use trying to dodge the ' Bulletin,' gentlemen," he 
added. And in fact his paper farther on, in treating 
of the same evil, did mention more names in a disagree- 
able way, 1 threatening always worse. The result, at 
least in part, of this plain speech, was action by the al- 
dermen, and a committee report on the condition of the 
city, in respect of the evil mentioned, — a report that, 
as published in the " Bulletin " of November 28, is one 
of the saddest confessions ever made by the governing 
board of a municipality. There is no sort of privacy, 
the committee say, about the evils complained of. The 
best families of the town are daily and unavoidably in- 
sulted by the immediate neighborhood of impudent evil 
in its least bearable forms, all good women, all children, 
being alike subjected to this disgrace. The committee 
knows of no possible remedy that will not of necessity 
include a reorganization of the police force. In fact, as 
is plain, while there were numerous pure and happy 
homes in San Francisco, there was as yet no really clean, 
pure, and large neighborhood in the city, to which re- 
spectable families could go for their dwelling-places and 
be safe. The struggle for a true and humane life was 
still a hand-to-hand fight in public with legions of loath- 
some little devils. 

the midst of respectable family residences, and on one of the most 
public thoroughfares." In connection with this letter, King makes 
the threat noted in the text. 

1 See editorial, November 26, 1855. 



436 CALIFORNIA. 

In another direction King had to fight against an 
equally wide-spread and even less curable form of pop- 
ular infidelity, namely, the general toleration shown 
towards gamblers, — a toleration which, after all these 
years, was still too prevalent. The gambler is King's 
pet villain, and especially towards the last of his work 
does the bold editor, constantly improving in his seri- 
ousness of speech, dwell upon the general social evils 
of the recent prevalence of gambling, and upon the 
esteem shown by some to the most notorious gam- 
blers. Public opinion in California has never, says 
King, really approved of gambling, but has only per- 
mitted it, at first for lack of law, then later by virtue of 
habit. But at all times, in California as everywhere, 
gambling has been a sin, and professional gamblers, 
whether licensed or not, have always been criminals. 
" A good citizen looks not to the laws of the state to 
guide him in ethics. ' As many as have sinned without 
the law shall perish without the law.' " In such fine 
fashion King seeks to exclude the professional gamblers 
once for all from the ranks of respectable and honest 
citizens, whether the laws have ever encouraged their 
business or not. The State, insists King, is just coming 
out of chaos into a normal condition, and the true and 
healthy public sentiment which has always existed is 
just finding a chance to express itself. Let no one try 
to resist it. 

The discussion in the course of which occur these 
expressions, themselves taken from the "Bulletin" of 
April 28, 1856, is especially noteworthy. Gamblers 
had undertaken to reply to King's repeated denuncia- 
tions. Why denounce, they had said, men who only 
gambled so long as the law permitted it, and who now 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 437 

obey the law, and do not follow public gambling as a 
profession any longer. After all, have not the profes- 
sional gamblers usually been men of marked ability and 
fine minds, who were driven to gambling as a business 
by the narrowness of their daily lives, and by a certain 
honorable pride ? — The honorable man of business, re- 
plied King, is the man " who in all his cares for this 
life has not neglected to cultivate those higher feelings 
of the heart — a reverence to God, and a desire for the 
moral improvement of his race." x 

It is in this connection that the very correspondent 
to whom these words of King are a reply, plainly one of 
the more good-humored of the gambling brotherhood, 
addresses King (in words that remind one of the well- 
known Turkish official's exhortation to Layard), and 
begs the able editor to give up this absurd care about 
the " public " good. I, he says, am one of "a large 
number who have long since ceased to worry their minds 
with schemes for the public welfare, — a class, by the 
way, much more numerous than you imagine, — who 
confidently look forward to the time when you will join 
their number, and rest from the thankless and unprofit- 
able task which you have imposed upon yourself. You 
are pursuing a course that will certainly drive you to 
despair if persisted in." 

VIII. THE CRISIS OF MAT, 1856. 

The time of rest for King was indeed not far off. It 
was expedient just then that one man should die for the 
people, and King's services, although not nearly fault- 
less, had been so excellent, that the gods seem to have 
esteemed him worthy of an unspeakable honor; and 
1 Bulletin, April 21, 1856. 



488 CALIFORNIA. 

they chose him as the man. He was shot down on the 
public streets, May 14, 1856, by one James Casey, a re- 
cently elected supervisor, an editor of a lesser journal, 
a politician of the baser sort, and a former convict in 
the New York state penitentiary, a man whom King- 
had denounced and exposed. King died six days 
later, of his wound ; but meanwhile the deed had 
aroused the greatest exhibition of popular excitement 
in the whole history of California. In lamenting and 
avenging the fate of this sturdy champion of a manly 
public spirit, the entire community experienced a new 
outpouring of that spirit, and King's death did far more 
than his life could possibly have done to regenerate the 
social order. That the immediate expression of the 
new life was the greatest of the vigilance committees is, 
after all, to my mind, the least important of the great 
facts of the situation. Such an expression, in view of 
Californian habits and feelings as they were at that 
time already formed, was indeed inevitable, but it was 
not the really essential social fact, which was that, upon 
King's death, there followed for many a really new 
life. This crisis was a revelation to them, which they 
never forgot. 1 

Why just the death of King, rather than many far 

1 Concerning Casey himself, and the details of his quarrel with 
King, all the accounts of the Great Committee have repeated the well- 
known statements for which the contemporary newspapers are of 
course the source. See especially Tuthill, p. 432, J. S. Hittell, p. 244. 
On the whole career of the committee, Tuthill 's account is the fullest 
so far published in book form, although the author had no access to 
the personal reminiscences that have since been made public from 
time to time. My space and purpose, after I have described the open- 
ing scenes, will limit me in great part to a discussion of the social 
bearings rather than of the external events of this best known and 
most frequently described scene of our story. 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 439 

worse evils then patent to any observer in San Fran- 
cisco, aroused so fearfully the popular attention, is a 
question of social psychology that one can more easily 
pretend to answer by a reference to well-known facts, 
than really put to rest by genuine explanations. A pop- 
ular hero is always needed, before the people can be 
converted from their sins ; and King, as we see, had 
some really heroic stuff in him. He seemed for the 
moment a martyr pure and simple. Wherefore had he 
fallen ? Because he had served the people, and had 
spoken fearlessly against evil. Who was now safe? 
Surely no honest and plain-spoken man. Who could 
now prosper here, in such an unpurified community ? 
Only the rogues. And the so much needed families — 
would they now crowd to this land of promise ? Cer- 
tainly not, so long as the blood of this husband and 
father, dead in his city's cause, cried to heaven in vain 
for vengeance. Would the courts suffice at such a cri- 
sis ? Nay, one's executive officers of the law were not 
trustworthy. Judges indeed might mean well and do 
well. But the sheriffs, and the deputies, and the police, 
not to mention the prosecuting attorneys, — who had 
confidence in them ? What but a revolution could de- 
liver the community from the body of this death ? Such 
thoughts were in many minds, and were embodied in 
most of the newspaper comments. The " Herald," whose 
editor the " Bulletin " had often sharply denounced, now, 
in return, spoke of the shooting of King as an " affray ; " 
but it was almost alone in failing to share the popular 
feeling. Most people had forgotten King's failings, in 
their sense of the public calamity of his death. In this 
one fact they saw a condensed expression of the whole 
corrupt state of society. In such a state of popular 



440 CALIFORNIA. 

feeling, a mob was imminent. The business men 
therefore chose to calm the spirits of more excitable 
people, and to enlist their active service in the cause of 
good order, by choosing the only alternative. They 
avoided mob law, pure and simple, only by organizing 
the most remarkable of all the popular tribunals, 
whereby was effected that unique historical occurrence, 
a Business Man's Revolution. For such was the second 
vigilance committee of San Francisco. 

On Wednesday afternoon, May 14, had appeared the 
denunciation of Casey by King which led to the shoot- 
ing. The same afternoon it was that King was shot. 
The next day's "Bulletin " appeared with a blank column 
in place of the usual editorial, and published in full the 
official documents from New York upon which King 
had founded his denunciation of Casey as a convict. 
The morning press had freely commented on the occur- 
rence, and the public excitement had been great. Calls 
for the vigilance committee were already in print, and 
in secret the new organization was already under way. 
The " Bulletin " of Friday contained very little news, 
but was crowded with furious letters from correspond- 
ents, with denunciations of the " Herald's " course in 
opposing the formation of a vigilance committee, and 
with other like expressions of excitement and rage. 
The announcement was made that the new committee 
was progressing finely with its organization ; several 
thousand names being now supposed to be enrolled, to 
obey the orders of the executive committee, whose meet- 
ings were of course private. 

Both the excitement and the formation of the com- 
mittee continued during the next few days. Saturday's 
" Bulletin " contained an item bearing on an important 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 441 

incident of the organization, an incident since much dis- 
cussed, namely, the visit of Governor Johnson to the 
rooms of the Vigilance Committee. Mayor Van Ness, 
feeling the dangers of the situation, with Casey confined 
in a not very secure jail, with newspapers so violently 
calling for vengeance, with a vigilance committee in 
process of formation, under the direction of the most 
prominent merchants, with King lying at death's door, 
had sent for the governor to come down to the aid of 
the law. This Know-Nothing governor, however, was 
not the ablest of California's statesmen, and the situation 
at San Francisco was far beyond his power to understand 
or to improve. As is now known, 1 Governor Johnson, 
on his arrival in the city Friday afternoon, called 
privately upon Mr. Coleman, who was already under- 
stood to be at the head of the executive committee, and, 
according to Mr. Coleman himself, seemed to appreciate 
the feelings of the San Francisco people, and gave the 
impression that he was willing to let them act as they 
saw fit, so long as they were careful to act as a body, 
and in an orderly way. 2 But late in the evening, the 
governor, in company with several other persons, visited 
the already well-guarded rooms of the committee, 3 and 

1 Through Mr. Wm. T. Coleman's statements, especially his elabo- 
rate one in B MS. 

2 Mr. Coleman, in this interview, reminded the governor, as an old 
Californian, of what had passed under similar circumstances before 
in the State, and then said (as Mr. Coleman now words it), " that I 
did not want him to feel that we were taking any advantage of his 
position ; but I honestly expressed to him my convictions of the neces- 
sities of the hour, and of what we wanted to do, and would do, as a 
body." " We " meant of course the executive committee. 

3 The visitors included General Sherman, just before that time ap- 
pointed by the governor major-general of the state militia. His well- 
known account of the interview is found in his Memoirs, vol. i. p. 
121, sqq. The committee were now meeting in the Turnverein Hall 
on Bush Street. 



442 CALIFORNIA. 

in a somewhat more official tone sought to make his 
hostility to the purposes of the committee evident. He 
first sent word in to the committee-rooms that he desired 
speech with Mr. Coleman, The members of the execu- 
tive committee, within doors, urged Mr. Coleman, as he 
went out, not to commit them to anything, to leave their 
freedom of action quite unimpaired, and to make no use- 
less promises to the governor. 1 Mr. Coleman was of the 
same mind. The visitors stood at first in an ante-room, 
waiting for their interview, and when Mr. Coleman came 
out, all together met in a bar-room to the right of the 
entrance. Mr. Coleman seemed to General Sherman 
"pale and agitated," a fact which the former seems not 
to have remembered, if it was real at all. But, at all 
events, the governor, " just as if he had not asked the 
same questions a few hours before, in our former inter- 
view " (as Mr. Coleman indignantly remarks), began to 
ask afresh about the purposes of the committee. Mr. 
Coleman responded that the people were determined, 
now at last, to see justice done in the city. This organ- 
ization was no mob, but it meant to see that Casey 
should not escape, and that San Francisco should not be 
left to her present sort of legal officers to prevent that 
escape. 

Hereupon Johnson made a proposal, whose nature 
and reception form the great topic of interest and of 
controversy concerning this interview. According to 
Johnson's own view, and to General Sherman's recollec- 
tion of the matter, Johnson proposed that " if Coleman 
and associates would use their influence to support the 
law, he (the governor) would undertake " that Casey's 

1 So much I hare orally from Mr. E. S. Osgood of Cambridge 
(already cited above), who was present within doors at the moment. 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 443 

legal trial should be as speedy and effective as possible, 
under the law. He even offered " to be personally re- 
sponsible for Casey's safe-keeping until his trial, or un- 
til his execution, in case he should be convicted. Mr. 
Coleman, according to the same account, 1 " admitted 
that the proposition of the governor was fair, and all 
he or any one should ask," and retired to submit it to 
the executive committee. After consultation, says this 
same account, Mr. Coleman reappeared, with a number 
of other men, representatives of the committee ; " the 
whole conversation was gone over again, and the gov- 
ernor's proposition was positively agreed to, with this 
further condition, that the Vigilance Committee should 
send into the jail a small force of their own men, to 
make certain that Casey should not be carried off or 
allowed to escape." 

This account, however, which makes Mr. Coleman 
and his companions surrender at once to the governor, 
and so undertake to leave Casey's trial to the regular 
courts at the very moment when all San Francisco was 
moved to instant vengeance, is antecedently absurd. 
No California committee ever at such a moment aban- 
doned its work. Had the governor offered or been able 
to offer his cooperation in a joint action of the popular 
body and of the officers of the law, such a joint action, 
for instance, as had been possible in the Hounds' affair 
in 1849, the committee might have yielded something 
of its own claims. But no such offer was now even 
remotely possible. And the governor meanwhile was 
not able to speak to the committee with any force be- 
hind him. His authority was unsupported. The militia 
companies of the city were already enrolling themselves 
1 See General Sherman's Memoirs, loc. cit., p. 122. 



444 CALIFORNIA. 

in a body on the committee lists, and the arms in the 
city were already in large part in the committee's pos- 
session. The militia force of the State at large was 
powerless ; and public opinion everywhere favored im- 
mediate justice upon the murderer of King. A com- 
mittee formed at such a crisis would have felt itself to 
be merely trifling with its enrolled thousands of mem- 
bers had it entertained for a moment such a proposition 
from an actually imjiotent governor, and had it suspended 
at the very outset its deliberate purposes. 

And, in fact, not only antecedent probability, but 
sound testimony, is against General Sherman's memory, 
a memory which, for the rest, was hardly meant by the 
Creator for purely historical purposes, genial and amus- 
ing though its productions may be. In this case the 
vigilance members directly concerned very plainly con- 
tradict General Sherman's account. Mr. Coleman heard 
the governor's proposition, indeed, just as General Sher- 
man reports it, but he did not assent to it. He first 
declined to make any compromise without consulting his 
associates. " I then," he declares (B. MS. as cited) 
"went back to the executive room, and reported the 
conversation briefly ; and Governor Johnson's proposi- 
tion met with prompt resistance ; every voice was raised 
against any halting, any hesitation, any parley, any con- 
cession short of prompt action." The committee of 
members, sent back with Mr. Coleman to continue the 
discussion with the governor, accordingly explained to 
the latter this decision of the executive committee, and 
made but one concession, namely, that no action should 
be taken by the executive committee to remove Casey 
from the jail, until Governor Johnson had received an 
hour's written notice of such intended action. Mean- 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 445 

while it was agreed that a guard of committee members 
should enter and be allowed to remain in the jail for the 
time, to see that the prisoners were safe, but not to super- 
sede or interfere with the lawful officers. In case this 
should be permitted, the representatives of the commit- 
tee promised the governor, as Mr. Coleman says, " That 
we would remain quiet for the present ; and they might 
rely upon our making no demonstration . . . until we gave 
formal notice of any change we wanted to make. And 
furthermore, if we changed our status, if we wished to 
withdraw from the contract," it was promised " that we 
would withdraw our forces from the jail, and leave it in 
their possession." All this, as Mr. Coleman insists, 
"was agreed to on our part in the most perfect good 
faith." The governor, he continues, misunderstood this 
action, interpreting it as an armistice, and the committee 
felt much aggrieved when they found out the fact the 
next day. 

With this account of Mr. Coleman's the memory of 
Mr. Osgood, as expressed to me recently in conversation, 
fully agrees. Mr. Osgood was one of the committee 
members who accompanied Mr. Coleman on his return 
from the executive rooms to the bar-room, where the 
governor was waiting. There can therefore be little 
doubt as to the understanding of the affair at the moment 
from the side of the very cool-headed and able members 
of the committee. 1 The spectacle of the governor of the 

1 As to the carrying out of this agreement in the sequel, there can 
also be no doubt that the governor was notified, by the committee, of 
their intended action, before they took Casey out of the jail, and that 
before this action itself they early endeavored to correct Johnson's 
misunderstanding of the result of the interview; see Sherman, loc. 
cit., p. 123. "Treacher}* - ," then, there was none, only distinct re- 
fusal to submit to the governor's wishes, coupled with a willingness 
not to act too hastily. 



446 CALIFORNIA. 

state here blundering into a worthless agreement with 
a body of men whom he could neither awe by any show 
of official force, nor thus privately approach with any 
sense of his official dignity, was not edifying, and the 
affair ruined him politically with both of the chief par- 
ties concerned in San Francisco affairs at that moment. 
The committee men despised him thenceforth, but no 
more than did the "Law and Order" men. Governor 
Johnson, it is plain, had not even the good sense to get 
his agreement with the committee, such as it was, into a 
written form. 

During these busy days, the " Law and Order " men 
themselves voiced their opinions in the " Herald," but 
they were powerless to resist the general popular senti- 
ment. They were generally either politicians or lawyers. 
What they had to say was itself often sound enough. 
Its application to this diseased community was, however, 
the real difficulty. A reformation was needed, this 
moment of popular excitement was the proper one to 
begin it ; and yet no beginning was possible just here 
and now that did not take the too familiar and yet so 
dangerous form of a popular tribunal. To resist the 
committee was only to throw the city the more certainly 
into the hands of a furious mob. The popular passion 
existed, and was for the time irresistible. The commit- 
tee's possible service would lie in directing and control- 
ling this passion, which no " Law and Order " sentiment 
could now quell. So serious are the situations that 
long-indulged social crimes produce ! 

On Sunday the first great act of the new organization 
was carried out. The committee went to the jail, and 
took therefrom Casey himself, conveying him cafeiy to 
their own rooms. Nor did their action stop here. 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 447 

Another now notorious criminal was confined in the 
jail, one Cora by name, who had some months previously 
shocked the community by shooting a United States 
marshal, General Richardson, for showing public dis- 
approval of Cora's mistress, herself also a person of no 
doubtful notoriety. The committee, in the carrying out 
of the popular will of the moment, felt itself justified in 
seizing Cora also, whose legal punishment was not very 
imminent. 

The seizure of these two was made an imposing spec- 
tacle. The executive committee called out twenty-four 
companies, of a nominal force of one hundred each. 
All the men had received a brief drill since the organ- 
ization of the committee. Many were old soldiers them- 
selves ; all were used to arms ; and a large number of 
Frenchmen who had joined the organization were es- 
pecially noteworthy for their fine appearance as soldiers. 
The movements of this body were skillfully directed, all 
the detachments into which the force was divided con- 
verging to the vicinity of the jail on Broadway, without 
any mistakes or confusion. About an hour was spent 
by the committee at the jail, where the leading mem- 
bers of the executive committee made their demands of 
the officers, and finally gained, through their quiet show 
of irresistible force, the peaceable surrender of both the 
prisoners, Casey being first given up, and then Cora. 
Houses ail about were covered with spectators, and the 
streets in the rear of the committee's force were 
thronged. The vast majority of those present as spec- 
tators warmly, although very quietly, approved of what 
was going on, and this first deed of popular justice, as 
executed by the great committee, was the most orderly 



448 CALIFORNIA. 

and impressive of its sort so far in the history of Cal- 
ifornia. 1 

IX. POPULAR VENGEANCE AND THE NEW MOVEMENT. 

The moral effect of this scene was very great, but it 
was only the first of a series. May 20, at half-past 
one, King died. The news was on public bulletin-boards 
at once, and the whole community was in mourning. 
The " Bulletin " appeared that afternoon without any 
comments on the death of its editor, time permitting 
only a four-lined notice of the fact before the number 
was printed. The public excitement was tremendous. 
All the church bells were tolled ; the prominent business 
houses were closed, their doors being draped in black ; 
the flags on the numerous ships in the bay were run up 
at half-mast ; vast crowds gathered in the streets near 
the committee rooms. No such disorder, however, was 
manifest now in the crowd about the committee rooms 
as had shown itself in 1851, on one similar occasion, 
when an immediate execution was expected. When the 
announcement was made that the members of the ex- 
ecutive committee were trying Casey, and that all should 
be done decently and in order, the citizens quietly dis- 
persed. The regular police of the city had meanwhile 

1 I have before me the accounts given by the Bulletin for Monday, 
May 19, and the Alta of the same date (as repeated in the steamer 
extra edition of May 21). The Alta account makes the number of 
companies present twenty-six. See, further, Tuthill, p. 439; J. S. Hit- 
tell, p. 249; Sherman, p. 124. Sherman makes the blunder of remem- 
bering this Sunday as the day of King's funeral. King was not yet 
dead. One has only to compare the remai'kable good order displayed 
on this occasion with the tumultuous scenes of the early affairs of 
1851, and with their hurrying and excited crowds of spectators, with 
their quarrels and their dangerous uncertainty of action, to see how 
well the arts of lynch law had now been learned. 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 449 

little to do. The committee did not try to supersede 
them as yet in other respects, and gave over into their 
hands one or two petty offenders, whom citizens arrested 
and brought to the rooms that evening. But the public 
mood appalled for the moment all offenders, great and 
small. The men popularly accused of being Casey's 
" conspirators," in the imagined " plot " that rumor 
made responsible for King's death, were in hiding- 
places. 

Chief among these supposed " conspirators " was Mr. 
Edward McGowan, whose " Narrative of the Author's 
Adventures and Perils while persecuted by the San 
Francisco Vigilance Committee of 1856 " (published by 
the author at San Francisco in 1857), is a book as en- 
tertaining as it is characteristic and unprincipled. Mr. 
McGowan (who still survives) had for some time been a 
personal friend of Casey's, had fully sympathized with 
the latter's indignation at King's cruel reference to cer- 
tain youthful indiscretions of Casey's in New York State, 
had known also, on that fatal afternoon, of Casey's in- 
tention to "fight" King, and had even "embraced" the 
convict hero before the combat, bidding him an affec- 
tionate farewell (see the " Narrative," pp. 14 and 15). 
Mr. McGowan had intended to follow Casey to this field 
of honor, and see what the " Herald " next day called 
the " affray." King, of course, would be armed, it was 
supposed, and " like almost all old Californians," Mr. 
McGowan " was accustomed to such sights ; and, natu- 
rally enough, when I knew that a fight was about to 
take place, curiosity prompted me to witness it." Un- 
der these circumstances, Mr. McGowan was indeed ex- 
posed to cruel suspicions of sharing in a conspiracy to 
kill King. It was within the next few days reported, 
29 



450 CALIFORNIA. 

falsely, he affirms, that he had lent Casey his own pistol 
for the occasion, and Mr. McGowan soon found it neces- 
sary first to hide, and then, by the help of his many 
friends, to fly. He was, in the sequel, pursued by mem- 
bers of the committee, far into the southern country, 
but finally escaped, and later returned to the city. I 
take Mr. McGowan's naive statement of his connection 
with King's death in perfectly good faith, since it is un- 
necessary to judge his character more severely than his 
own confession forces one to do. Good citizens do not 
behave in just this way, but Mr. McGowan was only in 
this sense a " conspirator." 

A "plot," then, "to assassinate " King had probably 
existed only in the sense that a number of those who, 
like Casey, had grievances against the plain-spoken ed- 
itor had frequently talked over their feelings and their 
wrongs, and had become more and more resolved to call 
him to account in their own way. This way, however, 
was not one that could be much furthered by a " con- 
spiracy to assassinate," because their moral code im- 
plied, as a matter of so-called "honor," something like 
a single combat in every such case. Any aggrieved per- 
son, namely, might shoot King on sight, since King once 
for all refused to fight regular duels, but " honor " 
would imply that every such assassin should take some 
apparent chance of being shot in return, and so should 
go alone to accost King. How much chance should be 
given to King to defend himself would, of course, de- 
pend, according to the well-known and amusing code of 
frontier street-fights, upon the taste of the individual 
assassin. Casey's taste preferred, as is also known, an 
immediate sequence of shot upon meeting, in such wise 
as to give King the least possible chance to return his 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 451 

fire. And, of course, all who knew beforehand of 
Casey's intent were alike accessories to the murder. 
But an effective conspiracy to unite in a murderous as- 
sault upon King would have been quite repugnant to 
all the gentlemanly instincts of these fellows. 

While the citizens mourned for King, the executive 
committee tried his assassin, as well as Cora. No jury 
was used in this case, the executive committee sitting as 
court, 1 but every opportunity is said to have been 
given to both men to offer any defense that they had. 
Both were, however, guilty of murder, and so much is 
clear. Both, moreover, had committed murder to 
avenge " insults," and both the " insults " were of a sort 
somewhat unavoidable in a world where spades are, 
after all, sooner or later, sure to be called spades by 
somebody, and that especially where the spades are 
already public property. One thing only the committee 
could yet do for its prisoners. It would not hang them 
too hastily. It would give them a little time to think, 
and would let them see spiritual advisers, if they de- 
sired, before the execution. This last privilege, I re- 
gret to say, is amusingly described by a prominent mem- 
ber of the committee (in a statement that has been 
among the several that I have had the good fortune to 
read) as an act "giving the prisoners the benefit of 
clergy.'" It is to be hoped that the " benefit " was ap- 
preciated, even if it was not precisely the same as the 
thing formerly called by that name. 

May 22d was set for King's funeral. The executive 

committee is said (by Mr. Osgood in his oral statements 

to me) to have been moved to appoint that day for the 

execution of Casey by reason of their fear that a rescue, 

1 See Mr. Coleman's statement, B. MS. 



452 CALIFORNIA. 

similar to that of Whittaker and McKenzie in 1851, 
would early be attempted. At all events, just as the fu- 
neral procession was following King to Lone Mountain, 
after a service at the Unitarian Church, in which several 
clergymen had joined to honor the martyr editor, the 
committee took its opportunity, and publicly executed 
both Casey and Cora, in front of its rooms, at a moment 
when the vast crowds in the neighborhood were slightly 
lessened by the departure of so many to witness the 
burial. The solemnity and good order of the execution 
are well known. Both the prisoners had been warned 
of their doom the day before. Both, as Catholics, had 
received the sacrament from ministers of their faith, and 
Cora was, before his execution, and by the order of his 
confessor, married to the mistress on whose behalf he 
had slain Richardson. Cora himself met death very 
coolly and without complaint. Casey, from the impro- 
vised platform in front of the rooms, made a brief and 
slightly incoherent and agitated dying speech,, wherein 
he denied that he was a murderer. His now aged and 
still living mother, he averred, had taught him to avenge 
insults. He had acted upon the teachings of his child- 
hood, and what he had done was no murder. Let no 
one publish to the world and to his mother that it was 
murder. Might God forgive him his many sins, and 
receive his spirit. And so the wretch died. 

With this act, thought many, and General Sherman 
among the rest, 1 the committee would have done its 
work, and would disband. Had it, however, done so, 
there would be hardly any place for the committee in 
history. The incidents thus far were but the beginning 
of the new movement, and their own significance lay 
1 Memoirs, vol. i. p. 124. 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 453 

elsewhere than in the hanging of one or two rogues. 
Not the execution of King's murderer, but the prosecu- 
tion of King's work, was the mission of the people of 
San Francisco at the time. And the Vigilance Com- 
mittee, with all its defects, represented this mission. 

The great task was, of course, to purify municipal pol- 
itics. Directly the committee could do nothing to this 
end, save to terrify and to banish a few notorious bal- 
lot-box stutters. But indirectly much could be done, by 
so popular a body, to organize public opinion, and to 
prepare it for the coming municipal elections of the au- 
tumn. The problem, of course, lay in the choice of the 
activity to which the committee should devote itself to 
gain this end. So powerful a body must be tempted, 
of course, to misuse its power, and unless it did so, the 
committee would soon be in danger of losing hold on 
the now over-excited public. A vigilance committee is 
once for all an evil presence in a city ; and its tendency 
to spread abroad disease is as sure, even in the best of 
cases, as its tendency to cure disease. The great com- 
mittee was productive of more good than evil only be- 
cause in the sequel it was not left to its natural tenden- 
cies, but was constantly guided by cautious and conscien- 
tious men, whose acts were not always wise, but whose 
purposes were honest and rational. Now that they had 
begun, they felt it a sin to abandon their task until they 
saw more fruit than the death of two scoundrels. But 
in order to finish their voyage safely they must steer 
clear of numerous and dangerously near rocks. 

X. PERILS AND TRIUMPHS OF THE GREAT COMMITTEE. 

The " Bulletin " of May 29th I choose at random 
among the numbers published during the early weeks of 



454 CALIFORNIA. 

the committee's life, as illustrating the dangers to which 
the committee was now subject from the side of its 
friends. The editor (by this time Thomas S. King, 
the brother of James) writes on " What the People ex- 
pect of the Vigilance Committee." " The people," 
says the editor, " look to them for reform — a radical 
reorganization in spirit if not in fact — of our city gov- 
ernment." The remaining persons suspected of conspir- 
acy against James King must, he continues, be caught, 
tried, and, if found guilty, hanged. But the committee 
must not stop there. It must purify the ballot-box. 
And how? "If we would have order hereafter, an ex- 
ample must now be made of the ballot-box stuffiers. If 
there is any one in the custody of the committee on 
whom ballot-box stuffing can be clearly proved, his pun- 
ishment should be exemplary. We are not ignorant of 
the weight of the words we utter. Tampering with 
elections is, in fact, the most heinous of crimes. It is 
worse than treason. . . . We do not mean ... to make 
suggestions to the committee. But it appears to us that 
to insure the future purity of elections, an example 
should be made. ... It may be that there are other 
means, but if not, let the men who have insulted our 
community, disgraced our State, and sown the seeds of 
which we have been lately reaping the fruits, meet their 
due fate, Death by Hanging — the words must be 
spoken — not in revenge for the past, but as a warning 
to all who might be inclined to emulate their example 
in the future. Hang one ballot-box stuffer, and we shall 
have no more of them." 

This loose talk is echoed by one or two correspond- 
ents whose letters appear in the same number (one H. 
B. G. in particular). So fatally blind is the righteously 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 455 

indignant citizen, at such moments, to the fact that the 
punishment of a wretch is after all of no more impor- 
tance than is the wretch himself, save in so far as such 
punishment conduces to good order. Good order, how- 
ever, is destroyed once for all by mere caprice. Inevi- 
table are such outbursts as the one that led to the hang- 
ing of Jenkins and of Stuart in 1851, or of Casey in 
1856 ; inevitable, namely, when the reaction in favor of 
good order involves strong passions and bitter repent- 
ance at once. But after such a passion has cooled a 
little, to deify its instrument, the Vigilance Committee, 
or to glorify its law, namely, caprice, — this is not inevi- 
table, and is criminal. Yet just this was what these un- 
wise friends of the committee desired, when they wanted 
the Vigilance Committee to undertake all God's work of 
vengeance in San Francisco, and to make " examples," 
without regard to the law or to the current sense of hu- 
manity. Ballot-box stuffing could not be cured by 
hanging this or that man ; but it could be cured by 
effective popular agitation. And the committee could 
and did agitate, partly by investigating and exposing 
past crimes of ballot-box stuffing, and partly by under- 
taking to banish, with threats that were only intended 
for momentary effect, a few of the guilty men. The 
indirect good it did in these ways is certain ; for thus 
the public was instructed in the seriousness of the evils. 
Yet not only in this matter was the committee tempted 
by its friends to go beyond bounds. A great popular 
movement, controlling so much power, and organized so 
well, suggested to foolish and ambitious persons num- 
berless political schemes. There were the old grievances 
of California against the general government : the afore- 
time long delayed payment of the Fremont war claims, 



456 CALIFORNIA. 

the still pending slow and uncertain efforts to settle the 
Spanish land titles, the imperfect mail service, the bur- 
densome tariff. And all these things some men were 
now disposed to bring up, and such men would suggest 
that, with some more independent flag, even with a Bear 
Flag, a vigilance committee might look well. Seces- 
sion had occasionally been talked of. Why not make 
this a movement to gain, by at least a bare threat of se- 
cession, concessions of some sort from Washington au- 
thorities ? If such concessions should be refused, why 
then let the government take the consequences. 

That such nonsense was actually heard in some men's 
talk in those days is undoubted. The leaders of the 
committee were themselves far from every such influ- 
ence, but the rank and file were numerous, and the for- 
eigners among these, the Frenchmen for instance, to- 
gether with some of the native Calif ornians themselves, 
took delight in such ideas, all of which were dangerous 
in the highest degree to the good order of the whole 
movement. Nor were all the Americans concerned by 
any means guiltless in this matter. 1 

Not only such wild-cat politics (as one may venture 
not too disrespectfully to name the opinions of the men 
who talked in those days of a Pacific Republic), but also 
many less immoral absurdities vexed the committee with 

1 The frequent letters of " Caxton," in the Bulletin, had sometimes 
taken openly a disunion tone, before the coming on of the crisis. So, 
in particular, his letter published April 9, 1856, a monument of the 
wordy unwisdom of this since so well-known California political and 
literary author. Mr. Coleman, in his B. MS. statement, speaks of the 
disunion propositions privately made to the committee leaders, and 
promptly rejected. Mr. Osgood speaks to the same effect in his oral 
account to me. The prevalence of disunion sentiments among certain 
classes of the California pioneers in the years before the war would 
form an interesting topic for a special research. 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 457 

calls for attention. In the course of its career, so Mr. 
Coleman tells us, the committte was much flattered and 
troubled by invitations to act as High Court of Justice 
to settle disputes arising in the interior of the State, or 
elsewhere : — " Not only criminals from distant parts 
of the State, but all kinds of acts occurring at sea were 
brought before us, or we were asked to undertake their 
trial and punishment, to redress wrongs, personal disa- 
greements, moral misdemeanors, social irregularities, 
. . . cases of fraud in money matters . . . family 
strifes . . . divorces." The committee could easily 
have spent many months or years upon such matters ; 
but such were not within its province. 

More serious difficulties beset the committee in the 
direct prosecution of its chosen tasks of purification. 
First of all, in order to have even the most moderate 
efficiency, the committee had to arrest and confine in its 
own quarters certain suspected persons, and to investi- 
gate in secret session the charges of election frauds, or 
of other offenses, made against them. This undertak- 
ing involved many risks, and made for the committee 
many new enemies. One of the most notorious of the 
earlier prisoners was " Yankee Sullivan," who is said to 
have known a great deal about the conduct of recent 
elections in certain wards, and who was pressed by the 
committee for some days with questions concerning 
ballot-box stuffers. The poor wretch was overcome 
with terror at his position, fancied that he was to be 
hanged, and, on the morning of May 31st, committed 
suicide in his room, cutting his arm with a case knife 
and bleeding to death. While no suspicion of foul play 
rested on the committee itself in connection with this 
affair, one could not help seeing that such an occurrence 



458 CALIFORNIA. 

indicated much sternness on the part of the committee 
towards its prisoners, either in questioning or in threat- 
ening them, or in both. The enemies of the committee 
used Sullivan's name thenceforth freely in speaking of 
the arbitrary acts of the body, 1 And the aforesaid 
loose talk of the friends of the committee gave the " Law 
and Order " people some just cause for alarm. The 
public could not know as yet how conscientious and 
cautious the leaders of the executive committee for the 
most part were, nor how little they were disposed to 
shed the blood of any save murderers. In ignorance 
of this fact, however, the " Law and Order " men felt 
more and more disposed to lead a reaction against the 
committee. On June 2d, in the afternoon, a mass 
meeting of the opponents of the committee was called to 
meet on the Plaza ; but the friends of the committee 
came also, and the affair was both disorderly and in- 
effective, although no worse missiles than hard words 
were interchanged. The speakers at the meeting were 
all lawyers, Colonel Baker being prominent among 
them. The crowd constantly interrupted the proceed- 
ings, and called for new speakers, or denounced the 
enemies of the committee. It was evident where the 
confidence of the public was still placed, and in San 
Francisco the " Law and Order " party could accom- 
plish nothing. 

Once more, then, the governor was called upon to in- 
terfere, and he was quite willing, although by no means 
ready. He had appointed General Sherman com- 

1 Sullivan's suicide has been attributed, by certain of the committee 
members, to something resembling delirium tremens: see J. S. Hit- 
tell, p 252. On the effect of this and other occurrences of the mo- 
ment upon the "Law and Order" party, see Sherman, p. 124 ; cf. 
Tuthill, pp. 449, 450. 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRAN CISCO. 459 

mander of the second division of the state militia, and 
he now appealed to General Wool, United States com- 
mander in the department, for the necessary arms and 
ammunition. For, as the committee had at their con- 
trol nearly all the arms in San Francisco, the State had 
no force with which to begin operations against the 
rebels. But the United States authorities were not dis- 
posed to take part in the domestic troubles of Califor- 
nia without definite instructions from Washington. 
With Commodore Farragut, commanding the navy yard 
at Mare Island, the committee had in fact already begun 
a comparatively friendly correspondence, to assure them- 
selves that the United States war vessel then lying in 
the harbor should not be used, unless by direct orders 
from a superior authority, to threaten or to suppress 
them. With General Wool they also sought to remain 
on good terms. He, however, seems to have been per- 
sonally opposed to the committee, and in conversation 
on May 31st, with Governor Johnson and other state 
officials, he used expressions that were interpreted by 
the latter as a definite promise to lend arms and ammu- 
nition for the suppression of the " insurrection." But 
upon further consideration, Wool felt that he could do 
nothing without orders from Washington, and said so, 
in writing, to the great disgust of the " Law and Order " 
men, and of the governor himself. 1 The governor ac- 
cordingly dispatched to the president at Washington a 
request for help. 

1 For facts and opinions about the controversy on Wool's supposed 
promise, see Sherman, pp. 125, 126 ; and the correspondence between 
Wool and Johnson as published in the Sen. Ex. Doc. 43, 3d Sess. of 
43d Congress. For Wool's interpretation of his own rather unguarded 
words used in conversation with the governor, see p. 7 of this cor- 
respondence; for Johnson's interpretation, see ib. p. 24. 



460 CALIFORNIA. 

Meanwhile, however, Johnson was not idle at home. 
On June 3d he issued a proclamation, declaring the 
county of San Francisco in a state of insurrection, and 
directing " all persons subject to military duty within 
said county to report themselves for duty immediately 
to Major-General William T. Sherman," to serve under 
the general's orders until disbanded. His proclamation 
also ordered the Vigilance Committee to disperse. A 
writ of the state supreme court, commanding the com- 
mittee to give up the body of one of its prisoners, was 
at nearly the same time evaded by the executive com- 
mittee, who concealed for the time their prisoner when 
the officer came with his writ. An open collision with 
the state authorities seemed now imminent. It was 
prevented only by the impotence of the state author- 
ities. Few men responded to the governor's call, or 
appeared to obey Sherman's orders, and after a few 
days Sherman himself met the governor once more at 
Benicia, and reported his failure to raise a force. At 
the same time a " conciliation committee " of certain 
San Francisco citizens who were not members of the 
committee came to meet the governor at the same place, 
seeking to arrange some sort of truce between the hos- 
tile parties. The governor himself was now much 
under the influence of Chief Justice Terry of the state 
supreme court, the most active of all the foes of the 
committee. This gentleman, later notorious as the 
slayer of Broderick, and already prominent as a repre- 
sentative of the ultra-Southern element in California 
political life, was outspoken in favor of open war against 
the rebels, whom, according to Sherman, he neatly de- 
scribed on this occasion as " damned pork-merchants," 
thereby not ineffectively indicating, after all, both the 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 461 

true character of this movement as a Business Man's 
Revolution, and his own true character as a despiser 
of mere business men. The private interview of the 
officials after they had seen the " conciliation commit- 
tee " was not fruitful of practical devices. General 
Sherman, despairing of success under the present con- 
ditions, resigned his commission, and returned to his 
daily business in San Francisco. The governor there- 
after appointed Volney E. Howard major-general in the 
place of Sherman, and the efforts to raise a militia 
force went on. To the very end, however, they were 
ineffective. 

The committee, meanwhile, was not idle. It had for 
some time begun to prepare itself for a collision with the 
state authorities, in case such should be forced upon it. 
In front of the rooms on Sacramento Street the mem- 
bers of the executive committee had caused to be made 
a strong barricade of sand-bags (the " Fort Gunnybags " 
of all the traditions since current concerning the affair). 
This they had armed with numerous cannon. Their 
small arms were kept within doors, their guard was 
always strong and vigilant, their new bell, now ready on 
top of the building, could summon at any moment their 
thousands of subordinate members. The meetings of 
this always small but energetic and authoritative ex- 
ecutive committee were held within the rooms and in 
secret. The thousands of the members of the general 
committee had, of course, their natural influence upon 
the conduct of the executive committee ; but they could 
not determine its action, and they were pledged to obey 
its orders. 

The life of San Francisco during the following weeks 
of June and July was a very curious one. Ordinary 



462 CALIFORNIA. 

business, indeed, went on much as usual, save in so far 
as its undertakings were a little delayed by the distrust 
of capitalists, or by the engrossing social duties that so 
many of its most active representatives now had to per- 
form. The courts sat and enforced their processes as 
usual, save that they might not interfere with the com- 
mittee itself. The respectable enemies of the committee 
went about openly, working and talking against it ; but 
they were not able to accomplish anything. Those 
rogues who feared the committee had for the most part 
disappeared. Order prevailed in the city. But mean- 
while the grim cannon of Fort Gunnybags, the ceaseless 
and secret activity of the executive committee within 
doors, the sensitiveness of the public to every hint of 
danger, and the occasional events or rumors of a start- 
ling sort, showed the community how near they all the 
time were to terrible events. No wonder that the re- 
solve constantly grew to prevent in future, by every hon- 
est means, the coming of another such crisis. If out- 
ward quiet was nearly always maintained, distrust of the 
future, doubt, and anxiety were always present. 

Later in June the committee caught what Mr. Cole- 
man, in his statement, calls its " white elephant," namely, 
Judge Terry himself. The courageous and violent su- 
preme judge could not bear to see the law set at naught. 
He came to San Francisco to do what he could towards 
resisting the committee. On June 21st he did actually 
interfere with an attempted arrest that some of the 
committee "police" were making, and his interference 
led to a personal encounter between him and one of 
these police, Hopkins by name. In the scuffle Judge 
Terry drew a knife, and stabbed Hopkins. The alarm- 
bell was forthwith sounded, the whole general committee 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 463 

was called out, and Judge Terry was arrested and taken 
to the fortress on Sacramento Street, amid tremendous 
popular excitement. Some arms that had still remained 
in the possession of " Law and Order " men were on 
this occasion seized, a large number of that party were 
arrested, and the day closed with the authority of the 
committee more undoubted than ever. Hopkins, mean- 
while, lay seriously, but as the event proved, not fatally, 
wounded. 1 

The arrest of Judge Terry furnished the committee a 
new reason for remaining in power some time longer. 
But it also put them in a very difficult position. If 
Hopkins should die, one could only with great difficulty 
avoid hanging Judge Terry, unless, indeed, one was 
willing to abdicate, and leave the mob to hang him it- 
self. But to hang by popular judgment a supreme 
judge is an act involving certain obviously embarrassing 
responsibilities. And if, as later actually proved to be 
the case, Hopkins should not die, then a supreme judge 
whom one could not effectively banish, nor yet imprison 
long, whom one must not hang, and whom one could not 
gracefully release without any punishment, would indeed 
be a " white elephant." 

In the sequel the committee passed anxious weeks, 
discussing the case, waiting for Hopkins to be out of 
danger, and reasoning with the undaunted prisoner, who 
was quite as certainly a good fighter as he was a bad 
supreme judge. It is probable that Judge Terry highly 
enjoyed his really very advantageous position. He re- 
fused to make any terms with the executive committee, 
which was finally forced to release him, without any 
other punishment than was involved in his disagree- 
l See Bulletin of June 23d. 



464 CALIFORNIA. 

able detention in Fort Gunnybags for the seven weeks 
of waiting for a verdict. 1 And thus the greatest danger 
of the committee's existence was happily passed. 

The other acts of the committee, its only further ex- 
ecutions, those of Brace and Hetherington, both mur- 
derers, 2 its curious and hardly warranted interference in 
the investigation of the city land questions, its successful 
avoidance of all open contests with Federal author- 
ities, and its final parade and retirement from activity 
on August 18th, — these are things of which we need 
not speak further in detail. The first real test of the 
success of the committee in its one true work, which was 
to agitate for a reform in municipal society and politics, 
came at the autumn elections, when the people sustained 
the whole movement by electing city officers to carry on 
in a legal way the reform which had been begun without 
the law. And thenceforth, for years, San Francisco 
was one of the best governed municipalities in the 
United States. 

1 "His release/' says Mr. J. S. Hittell, p. 256, "was regarded by 
some persons as giving power to the most formidable enemy of the 
reform movement." The first bitter disappointment of the hot-headed 
friends of the committee is vented in the Bulletin for August 8, 1856, 
as soon as the release is announced. The blindness of these hot- 
headed friends was often something marvelous. 

2 Brace had committed a murder two years before. Hetherington 
killed one Dr. Randall in a quarrel, July 24th. Both were publicly 
hanged July 29th, after a fair trial before the executive committee. 
Only four lives were thus taken by this committee, all of known mur- 
derers. The only other punishment inflicted was banishment, im- 
posed upon several notoriously bad characters, and upon a few con- 
victed ballot-box stuffers. And, as we see, the rest of the effective 
activity of the committee consisted only in making arrests, in detain- 
ing prisoners for examination, in investigating the topics that it took 
under consideration, and in protecting itself against threatened as- 
saults. 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 465 

The reader will hardly ask, after all we have said, 
for any lengthy final view of the rights and wrongs of 
this greatest of the popular movements in California 
history. Under the circumstances, as we have seen, it 
was inevitable. What had made it inevitable was a long 
continued career of social apathy, of treasonable public 
carelessness. What it represented was not so much the 
dignity of the sovereign people, as the depth and bitter- 
ness of popular repentance for the past. What it ac- 
complished was not the direct destruction of a criminal 
class, but the conversion of honest men to a sensible and 
devout local patriotism. What it teaches to us now, 
both in California and elsewhere, is the sacredness of a 
true public spirit, and the great law that the people who 
forget the divine order of things have to learn thereof 
anew some day, in anxiety and in pain. 

With the improvement of municipal business the 
moral and intellectual progress of society did not alto- 
gether keep pace. If one learned the importance of 
public spirit, one did not learn for many years to devote 
enough time to the higher human interests. But at all 
events the essentials of civilization had been fought for 
and gained ; and the San Franciscan was thenceforth 
free to serve God as his own conscience dictated. 
30 



CHAPTER VI. 

LAND-TITLES AND POLITICS. 

In treating of the period that followed the constitu- 
tional convention, we have thus far dealt mainly with 
the local occurrences of the golden days, and have said 
little of the general problems of the State at large. 
The struggle for order, in the mines, in San Francisco, 
and in all the lesser commercial towns, rapidly devel- 
oped the character of the new California population, 
and so produced everywhere alike that much-enduring, 
often rash, always toilsome race of the pioneers, with 
their well-known over-confidence in short and easy so- 
cial methods, with their not less noteworthy shrewdness 
in controlling their own social excesses, and with their 
remarkable power of organizing quickly for the purpose 
either of defending the established authorities, if these 
should meet their approval, or of setting the authorities 
aside, if these should seem to them dangerously ineffi- 
cient. But if this character grew rapidly under the va- 
rious local influences, the future of the State at large 
must be affected very greatly by the further conditions 
that determined not so much the character as the for- 
tunes of the population of the whole country. Of these 
conditions the first was the state of the land tenure in 
all the most promising agricultural regions of the new 
State. 



LAND-TITLES AND POLITICS. 467 

I. EARLY LAND-TROUBLES. 

The uncertainty of the land-titles at the time of the 
conquest, and during the interregnum, we have already, 
in some fashion, studied. How significant all this must 
be for the future of the State, is evident at a glance. 
The future California must needs be an agricultural 
province, whatever the gold excitement might for the 
time make the country seem. And that its land-titles 
should soon be settled, and in an honest way, was an es- 
sential of all true progress. How the people came to a 
consciousness of this fact, and how this consciousness 
entered into certain deeds of the struggle for order, 
we can only sketch in this connection. The wild 
schemes of the early interregnum had passed away 
with time, but the new-comers of the gold-period were 
subject to somewhat similar illusions and dangers. If 
things had appeared as they did to the comparatively 
small group of Americans in the dawn of our life here, 
even before the gold discovery, how long should this 
complex spider-web of land-titles, wherewith a California 
custom or caprice had covered a great part of the terri- 
tory, outlast the trampling of the busy immigrants? 
Who should resist these strange men ? The slowly mov- 
ing processes of the courts — how could they, in time, 
check the rapacity of American settlers, before the mis- 
chief should once for all be done, and the memory of 
these land-titles buried under an almost universal pred- 
atory disregard of them, which would make the recov- 
ery of the land by its legal owners too expensive an un- 
dertaking to be even thought of? The answer to this 
question suggests at once how, amid all the injustice of 
our treatment of Californian land-owners, our whole his- 



468 CALIFORNIA. 

tory has illustrated the enormous vitality of formally 
lawful ownership in land. This delicate web, that our 
strength could seemingly so easily have trampled out of 
existence at once, became soon an iron net. The more 
we struggled with it, the more we became involved in its 
meshes. Infinitely more have we suffered in trying to 
escape from it, than we should have suffered, had we 
never made a struggle. Infinitely more sorrow, not to 
speak of blood, has it cost us to try to get rid of our old 
obligations to the Californian land-owners, than it would 
have cost us to grant them all their original demands, 
just and unjust, at once. Doubt, insecurity, retarded 
progress, litigation without end, hatred, destruction of 
property, bloodshed, — all these have resulted for us from 
the fact that we tried as much as we did to defraud 
these Californians of the rights that we guarantied to 
them at the moment of the conquest. And in the end, 
with all our toil, we escaped not from the net, and it 
binds our land-seekers still. 

At ail events, however, the critical character of the 
situation of California land-owners at the moment of 
the coming of the gold-seekers appears plain. That all 
the rights of the Californians should ultimately be re- 
spected was, indeed, in view of our rapacious Anglo- 
Saxon land-hunger, and of our national bigotry in deal- 
ing with Spanish Americans, impossible. But there 
were still two courses that our population might take 
with regard to the land. One would be the just-men- 
tioned simple plan of a universal squatters' conspiracy. 
Had we agreed to disregard the land-titles by a sort of 
popular fiat, then, ere the courts could be appealed to 
and the method of settling the land-titles ordained by 
Congress, the disregard of the claims of the natives 



LAND-TITLES AND POLITICS. 469 

might have gone so far in many places as to render any- 
general restitution too expensive a luxury to be profitable. 
This procedure would have been analogous to that fash- 
ion of dealing with Indian reservations which our hon- 
est settlers have frequently resorted to. Atrociously 
wicked as such a conspiracy would have been, we our- 
selves, as has been suggested above, should have been in 
the long run the greatest sufferers, because the conspiracy 
could not have been successful enough to preserve us 
from fearful confusion of titles, from litigation and war- 
fare without end. Yet this course, as we shall see, was 
practically the course proposed by the Sacramento 
squatters of 1850, and for a time the balance hesitated 
between the choice of this and of the other course. The 
other course we actually adopted, and it was indeed the 
one peculiarly fitted to express just our national mean- 
ness and love of good order in one. This was the plan 
of legal recognition and equally legal spoliation of the 
Calif ornians — a plan for which, indeed, no one man was 
responsible, since the cooperation of the community at 
large was needed, and obtained, to make the Land Act 
of 1851 an instrument for evil and not for good. The 
devil's instrument it actually proved to be, by our 
friendly cooperation, and we have got our full share of 
the devil's wages for our use of it. But bad as this 
second course was, it was far better than the first, as in 
general the meanness and good order of an Anglo- 
Saxon community of money-seekers produce better re- 
sults than the bolder rapacity and less legal brutality of 
certain other conquering and overbearing races. 

In the winter of 1849 and in the spring of 1850 our 
rapacity first became noticeable under the new condi- 
tions. As it happened, the city of Sacramento grew 



470 CALIFORNIA. 

up on land near Sutter's Fort, and, of course, within the 
boundaries of Sutter's own grant of land, which he had 
received from Governor Alvarado in 1841. In the first 
months of the town's life, numerous lots of land were 
sold under this title, and those who acquired the new 
property profited, of course, very greatly by the rapid 
growth of the place. But by the winter of 1849 there 
were enough landless, idle, and disappointed wanderers 
present in Sacramento to make the existence of land 
ownership thereabouts appear to these persons as an 
intolerable burden, placed upon the necks of the poor 
by rapacious land-speculators. Such reflections are, of 
course, the well-known expressions of human avarice 
and disappointment everywhere in the world. Here 
they assumed, however, a new and dangerous form. 
One asked, " How comes it that there is any ownership 
of land in this golden country at all ? Is this not a free 
land ? Is it not our land ? Is not the public domain 
free to all American citizens ? " The very simple answer 
was, of course, that this land was not public domain, but 
Sutter's former land, sold by him, in the free exercise 
of his rights, to the founders of Sacramento. And this 
answer was, moreover, especially significant in this par- 
ticular case. For Sutter's ownership of " New Helvetia" 
was, by this time, a matter, so to speak, of world-wide 
notoriety. The young Captain Fremont's "Report," 
which, in various shapes and editions, had years before 
become so popular a book, and which the gold-fever 
made more popular than ever, had distinctly described 
Sutter as the notorious and indisputable owner of this 
tract of land in 1844. If occupancy without any rival 
for a term of years could make the matter clear to a 
new-comer, Sutter's title to his " establishment " seemed 



LAND-TITLES AND POLITICS. 471 

beyond shadow. Moreover, the title-papers of the 
Alvarado grant were on record. Governor Alvarado's 
authority to grant eleven leagues to Sutter was indubita- 
ble, and none the less clear seemed the wording of the 
grant, when it gave certain outer boundaries within 
which the tract granted was to be sought, and then de- 
fined the grant so as to include the " establishment at 
New Helvetia." Surely, one would say, no new-comer 
could attack Sutter's right, save by means of some purely 
agrarian contention. A settler might demand that all 
unused land in California should be free to every settler, 
and that Mexican land-ownership should be once for all 
done away with. But unless a man did this, what could 
he say against Sutter's title to New Helvetia ? 

The complaining idlers in Sacramento were, however, 
quite equal to the task of overthrowing this argument. 
What, after all, was a Mexican title worth beside the 
rights of an American citizen ? This grant of Sutter's 
might indeed be a test case, but then so much the more 
must the test determine the worthlessness of all Mexican 
pretensions. The big Mexican grant was to this new 
party of agitators, who already delighted to call them- 
selves " squatters," an obviously un-American institution, 
a creation of a benighted people. What was the good 
of the conquest, if it did not make our enlightened 
American ideas paramount in the country ? Unless, 
then, Congress, by some freak, should restore to these 
rapacious speculators, the heirs of a justly conquered 
and dispossessed race, their old benighted legal status, 
they would have no land. Meanwhile, of course, the 
settlers were to be as well off as the others. So their 
thoughts ran. 

Intelligent men could hold this view only in case they 



472 CALIFORNIA. 

had already deliberately determined that the new-com- 
ing population, as such, ought to have the chief legal 
rights in the country. This view was, after all, a very 
obvious one. Providence, you see, and manifest destiny 
were understood in those days to be on our side, and 
absolutely opposed to the base Mexican. Providence, 
again, is known to be opposed to every form of oppres- 
sion ; and grabbing eleven leagues of land is a great 
oppression. And so the worthlessness of Mexican land- 
titles is evident. 

Of course the squatters would have disclaimed very 
generally so naked a statement as this of their position. 
But when we read in one squatter's card * that " surely 
Sutter's grant does not entitle to a monopoly of all the 
lands in California, which were purchased by the treas- 
ure of the whole nation, and by no small amount of the 
best blood that ever coursed or ran through American 
veins," the same writer's formal assurance that Sutter 
ought to have his eleven leagues whenever they can be 
found and duly surveyed cannot blind us to the true 
spirit of the argument. What has this " best blood " to 
do with the Sutter grant ? The connection in the 
writer's mind is only too obvious. He means that the 
" best blood " won for us a right to harass great land- 
owners. In another of these expressions of squatter 
opinion I have found the assertion that the land specula- 
tors stand on a supposed old Mexican legal right of such 
as themselves to take up the whole territory of California, 
in sections of eleven leagues each, by some sort of Mex- 
ican preemption. If a squatter persists in understanding 
the land-owners' position in this way, his contempt for 

1 Published during a later stage of the controversy, in the Sacra- 
mento Transcript for June 21, 1850. 



LAND-TITLES AND POLITICS. 473 

it is as natural as his willful determination to make 
game of all native Californian claims is obvious. 

The squatter party, as it appeared in the winter of 
1849 in Sacramento, was encouraged to develop its 
ideas by reason of the unsettled condition of the country. 
It was easy for men to feel that in this land, where no 
very definite government yet existed, where even the 
new state, before its admission, must seem of doubtfully 
legal character, every man might do what seemed right 
to himself and every new party might propose any view, 
however subversive of good government. A respect for 
the old Californian order of things was not yet devel- 
oped ; a new-comer was often hardly conscious that 
there ever had been an old order. And when one heard 
about it from the men of the interregnum, one also heard 
the cruelly false tale, begotten of the era of our conquest, 
about the injustice, the treachery, and the wickedness of 
the old government and people. One felt, therefore, 
well justified in wishing a new and American order of 
things to replace every relic of Mexican wretchedness. 
And, just because such conquest as this of California 
was a new experience in our short national history, one 
was often wholly unmindful of the simple and obvious 
principles according to which the conqueror of a country 
does not, by virtue of his conquest, either dispossess 
private land-owners, or deprive the inhabitants of any 
other of their private rights. One was, in fact, so ac- 
customed to our atrocious fashion of conquering, dispos- 
sessing, and then exterminating Indian tribes, that one 
was too much disposed, a priori, to think of our conquest 
of California as exemplifying the same cruel process. 

The first scenes of the land agitation at Sacramento 
in the winter of 1849-50 have been but imperfectly 



474 CALIFORNIA. 

described for us. Bayard Taylor mentions them briefly, 
and so does a later correspondent of the " New York 
Tribune." * A recent article of my own on the topic 2 
has, since its publication, called out some very interest- 
ing contemporary letters which a pioneer, now living in 
Oakland, Cal., has preserved, and which bring the scenes 
of the early agitation well before us. I make one ex- 
tract from them here. They were published in a late 
number of the " San Francisco Bulletin " : — 

" I will endeavor," says the writer of the letter, him- 
self a new-comer in Sacramento, who is addressing an 
Eastern friend, " to give you some idea of life in Sacra- 
mento, by relating some events that occurred this even- 
ing: It is rather a dark one, and walking along the 
levee requires some care to avoid falling over the nu- 
merous obstructions, but it was a political meeting that I 
stumbled into as I passed up R Street. That you may 
understand the state of things, I will explain a little ; 
the question of land-titles and squatter's rights is just 
now greatly agitating the public mind. In several in- 
stances where men have squatted upon land without the 
precincts of the city, others have pretended to own it 
and ordered them off, and in one case the city authori- 
ties, on a man's refusal to vamose, sent a force and 
pulled down his shanty. 

" Last Saturday evening a meeting of squatters was 

1 See the number of May 22, 1850. 

2 Published in the Overland Monthly for September, 1885, and 
originally intended as a chapter of the present volume. The subject, 
however, quite outgrew the limits of this book, and while I have made 
one or two extracts from the article in my text here, I am obliged, for 
the most part, merely to refer the reader to this somewhat detailed 
study of the events that led up to the " squatter riot of 1850 in Sacra- 
mento." 



LAND-TITLES AND POLITICS. 475 

held out-doors. I was not present, but hear that much 
opposition was expressed to the measures adopted by the 
city officers, some of whom were present, and replied in 
no very courteous terms. The meeting this evening was 
intended as an opposition to the other, and styled ' Law 
and Order.' The speaker's stand was on some boxes 
piled up against the ' Gem,' a bowling, drinking, and 
gambling saloon. A board nailed against it, about even 
with the speakers' heads, supported a row of candles, 
which burned without a flicker, so still was the air. A 
large and democratic crowd were assembled. A com- 
mittee was appointed to draw up resolutions, which were 
read. In the preamble the squatters were spoken of as 
having acted lawlessly and in contempt of the authori- 
ties. The substance of the resolutions was that the city 
council should be sustained at all events ; that a com- 
mittee should be appointed to proceed to Monterey and 
obtain a copy of J. A. Sutter's title to the land claimed 
by him, attested to by the governor of California. 

" This land comprises most of the territory on which 
the city is built. They were read with much interrup- 
tion, and on the question being put, indignantly rejected. 

" At this juncture, another speaker arose, and com- 
menced, but was interrupted with cries of 'Your 
name ? ' ' My name is Zabriskie,' he replied. In a 
respectful manner he avowed his determination to speak 
his sentiments, and beginning with the hand-bills which 
had been printed, calling a meeting to sustain " law and 
order " in the community, he considered it an insult to 
the people to suppose that any were otherwise inclined. 
Then, in regard to the preamble, which spoke contempt- 
uously of ' squatters,' in an eloquent speech he asked 
who carried the ' Stars and Stripes,' the institutions 



476 CALIFORNIA. 

and laws of our land into the far West, and have now 
borne them even to the shores of the far-off Pacific ? 
Then arose from the crowd the reply, ' Squatters.'' 

" He then moved that this preamble be rejected, and 
the motion was carried without a dissenting voice. So 
he went on with each resolution, speechifying and mov- 
ing that some be rejected, some adopted, and some 
amended, most of his motions being carried unanimously, 
making altogether a different set of resolutions than the 
projectors had calculated upon. He went strongly for 
sustaining the authorities in carrying out such just laws 
as they should enact. On the resolution which so read, 
he experienced much opposition, the sovereign people 
being extremely jealous that laws should be made, which, 
however just in the eyes of their makers, would be other- 
wise in their view. He contended that a man might 
squat where he pleased, and leave for nobody who could 
not show a better title than himself ; that when a judi- 
ciary was appointed over the State was the time to de- 
cide the validity of titles, until which time, society 
would be benefited, the squatter would be benefited, the 
land, and consequently, the owner, whoever he was, 
would be benefited by its being brought under cultiva- 
tion." 

After the river flood of January, 1850, had passed 
over the town of Sacramento, the quarrel was tempora- 
rily suspended, especially by the prosperous opening of 
the spring of 1850, which sent many of the malcontents 
early to the mines. But persistent spring floods forced 
many of these to return afresh to the now once more 
prosperous city. The discontent broke out again, and 
the title-papers of Sutter's grant, when once found and 
published, were soon made the subject of very bitter 



LAND-TITLES AND POLITICS. 477 

and unfair quibbles and quasi-legal objections. By the 
beginning of summer the squatter movement had be- 
come formidable in Sacramento and in the adjacent 
country. Its followers had organized an association, 
had begun a regular system of squatting on all vacant 
lots in and near the town, and were already planning 
every even remotely feasible sort of resistance to the 
real owners who held under the Sutter title. As Con- 
gress had still done nothing to settle titles in California, 
and as the State had not yet been admitted, the squat- 
ters had the effrontery to pretend in their public utter- 
ances that there was no legal support actually in exist- 
ence for the Californian grants. They declared that 
even the legislature, which had already once met, had 
had no business to pass laws bearing on the subject of 
land. Still less, they said, had the so-called city of Sac- 
ramento, in its corporate capacity, any right to interfere 
with squatters. And as for the processes of state 
courts, if worst came to worst, these must be defied. 
Breathing out such threatenings, the squatters met fre- 
quently during the summer, in a more or less public 
fashion. They excited the attention of many in other 
parts of the State, and the alarm of all wiser men that 
appreciated their purposes. They were ably led. 
Among others, Dr. Charles Robinson, of Fitchburg, Mas- 
sachusetts, later so prominent as governor of Kansas, 
was especially noteworthy as a squatter leader. His 
conscientious motives in supporting the squatter doc- 
trine, his sagacity in conducting the movement, and his 
personal courage in forcing it to an issue, are all obvious. 
Obvious also is his wicked and dangerous use in this 
connection of the then current abstractions about the 
absolute rights of Man and the higher will of God, to- 



478 CALIFORNIA. 

gether with his diabolical activity in resisting the true 
will of God, which was of course at that time and place 
simply the good order of California. Every moral force, 
every force, namely, that worked for the real future 
prosperity of the new commonwealth, was ipso facto 
against these lawless squatters. The " land-speculators," 
whom they directly attacked, were indeed as greedy for 
gold as anybody in California, and were as such no more 
worthy of esteem than their even Christians. But these 
speculators chanced, in just that case, to represent both 
the old Calif ornian order of things, which we were bound 
in sacred honor to respect, and the majesty of the new- 
born State as well, to which every citizen owed the most 
devout allegiance, so long as he should dwell within its 
borders. To these two great obligations the squatters 
were traitors, and their movement was unfortunately the 
father of much more treason, which showed the same 
turpitude, if not the same frankness. 

But, for the time, they were unable to do more than 
to bring about a riot, and a consequent reaction of pop- 
ular feeling against themselves ; a reaction which ended 
the possibility of any general predatory conspiracy 
throughout the State against the old land-titles, and 
which therefore introduced the squatter movement to the 
second stage of its sinful life, so that it became thence- 
forth no longer an open public enemy, but a treacherous 
corrupter of legislation, and a persistent pettifogger in 
the courts of justice. The cause of the riot was this : 
In August, 1850, the squatters were deeply disappointed 
at an adverse decision in a suit of some importance 
brought against one of their number. Angry and defi- 
ant, they were disposed to take the advice of Dr. Rob- 
inson, and to appear in force and armed in the streets 



LAND-TITLES AND POLITICS. 479 

of Sacramento, and to resist by violence and forth- 
with all court processes served upon any of them. A 
stormy Saturday night mass - meeting was devoted to 
threats of this sort. Only about forty, however, were 
finally bold enough to follow Dr. Robinson to battle on 
August 14. The land-owners, encouraged by the vigor- 
ous orders of the mayor, improvised a posse on the 
streets, at the sight of the armed rioters ; and a col- 
lision took place in the effort to disperse the squatter 
party. Shots were exchanged, three men were killed, 
one of them a squatter - leader, and one the city as- 
sessor ; and five persons (including Dr. Robinson) were 
wounded. The city was thrown into the wildest excite- 
ment, popular indignation was aroused to a white heat, 
and no squatter was for the time safe within the limits 
of the town ; for the large neutral floating population, 
no less than the people dependent for their business life 
upon the regular land-owners, were now alike deter- 
mined to put an end to the disturbance. News of the 
affair traveled quickly through the State ; militia has- 
tened to Sacramento from San Francisco, an exagger- 
ated alarm spread through the country for a few days, 
and the agitation of the summer of 1850 was for the 
time quickly put down. 1 

The public dread of the squatters, also, of course died 
away as quickly, and wich it much of the momentary 
popular indignation. Nobody had time in California to 

1 In the article above referred to, the fatal encounter of the day 
after the riot, an encounter in which the sheriff of the county was 
killed, together with two or three of the opposing party, is also de- 
scribed ; and the scenes of the crisis are in general recounted in a de- 
tailed manner not here possible. Dr. Robinson himself recovered 
from his wounds, escaped any effective prosecution, was elected to the 
legislature of 1851, and left the State in the following summer. 



480 CALIFORNIA. 

reflect on the true significance of such movements, and, 
although the riot had once for all made open and wide- 
spread violence an impossible device, there was still a 
chance for the squatters, in the second stage of their 
movement, to form a so-called Settlers' Party, and to 
agitate in a less violent way for state or national legisla- 
tion in their favor. At Sacramento they remained, by 
dint of litigious persistence and of political agitation, a 
serious practical vexation for many years, until the 
Sutter title was finally confirmed, the grant surveyed, 
and a government patent given for the land. 

II. THE NATIVE POPULATION, AND THE LATER STRUG- 
GLE FOR THE LAND. 

From direct and general assault by violence the Mex- 
ican grants as a body were thus erelong safe, however 
numerous might be the affrays that from time to time 
would take place over one or another of them. But 
many were the troubles through which they were yet to 
pass, and we in California ourselves with them. 

Three roughly defined classes may be named into 
which the land claims of the Calif ornians might be dis- 
tinguished. There were, first, the claims that were ob- 
viously and notoriously valid. Such were the claims of 
individuals or of families that had for many years lived 
on their estates, in undisputed ownership, their titles 
being also recorded in the archives. Against such 
claims no merely technical objections ought to have re- 
ceived a moment's hearing. The sole problem in such 
cases, in itself often difficult enough indeed, was to dis- 
tinguish by a just survey the boundaries of these claims 
from the surrounding public lands. For, in the old 
days, it had been customary to grant land in parcels of 



LAND-TITLES AND POLITICS. 481 

eleven leagues or less, but without any exact definition 
of the boundaries. Outside boundaries were named, 
within which the tract granted was to be found ; and 
questions might often arise concerning the proper posi- 
tion of the grant within these boundaries. Only in such 
cases as Sutter's, where an " establishment," or an exist- 
ent dwelling, was mentioned in the grant, as already ex- 
istent, and as included in the tract granted, could the 
situation of the grant, at least in part, be forthwith de- 
termined. In other cases the problems of the survey 
might have all degrees of vagueness. Still, concerning 
the actual right of the grantee to the amount of land de- 
scribed in his grant, and, under any survey, to that por- 
tion of his claim which immediately surrounded and in- 
cluded both his own dwelling and the lands that he had 
long and without question occupied under his grant ; 
concerning all this right there could be no shadow of 
doubt. Such rights should have been simply and 
promptly confirmed. 

A second class of cases involved problems of more or 
less obscurity. The more recent grants, even when 
held in good faith, might be subjact to very proper 
question. Conflicting grants might also be found to 
exist, and might need careful examination before settle- 
ment. The nature of certain pretensions might be very 
doubtful, and the highest legal authority might have to 
study them with great care. Such, for example, were 
the cases of the Mission property, where the question 
whether the church had properly either any complete 
title or any equitable right in the extensive old Mission 
estates was one that could not be settled at a glance. 1 

1 An impression remained in fact long prevalent that the church 
was at least in equity the owner of the Mission estates, and certain 
"31 



482 CALIFORNIA. 

And such a problem as whether San Francisco was or 
was not a pueblo, and so entitled to its four square 
leagues of land, demanded the most elaborate and schol- 
arly study ; and the highest authorities long differed 
concerning it. For the examination of such matters 
as these a competent tribunal was indeed needed, and 
should have been provided without delay. 

The third class of claims were the simply fraudulent 
ones, and these proved in the end unfortunately too nu- 
merous. The worst possible way of dealing with them 
was, of course, to delay examining them. Any time 
wasted in wrangling over predatory objections offered 
to the undoubtedly genuine and traditionally recognized 
rights of the older land- owners was so much time and 
inducement given to the rascals to invent either false 
new claims or false evidence for these claims. Novel and 
suspicious claims, such as that of Limantour to a great 
part of the city of San Francisco, a claim not heard of 
before 1851, should have been, as soon as presented, 
among the first subjects of rigid judicial investigation. 
And the appointed tribunals should therefore have been 
free to devote time to these, instead of being long de- 
tained over an examination of every possible quasi-legal 
objection that could be offered to the well-known and 
well-established claims of the older land-owners. 

These principles were perfectly obvious, and there 
can be no doubt of at least one often mentioned device 
by which the true ends of justice could have been fur- 
thered. The Calif ornian archives were, save for a few 
inevitable losses, in our possession. Mr. William Carey 
Jones, as United States commissioner, in 1849, for the 

writers have been at great pains to keep this erroneous impression be- 
fore the public mind. 



LAND-TITLES AND POLITICS. 483 

examination of the land question in California, spent 
much time in preparing his lengthy and able report 
upon the land claims, as shown by these archives. It 
would, therefore, have been the natural and just course 
on the part of Congress to confirm, by a simple act, all 
those recorded and undisputed land grants whose own- 
ers had been in actual and quiet possession for a term 
of from five to ten years before the conquest. This act 
could have been executed by commissioners, as the first 
step towards the judicial settlement of the land problem 
in California. Then either the same commissioners, or 
other tribunals, could have been appointed to consider 
the settlement of the doubtful matters, as a second step 
towards the final goal. 

So obvious was this method that, from 1850 to the 
present day, there have not been wanting those who 
have praised it as the sole proper device. Such at first 
advised it ; and later, they, with many others, lamented 
that it had not been chosen. But we were too selfish to 
be wise. What we did was far less just, and also far 
less clever. 

The Land Act of 1851 was the work of Senator 
Gwin, the same who had led captive the poor native 
Californians in the constitutional convention. Gwin 
protested, against Senator Benton and others who, on 
the floor of the senate at Washington, very justly and 
wisely opposed his scheme, that he desired nothing so 
much as to be fair to the Californians. In fact, his bill, 
as presented at the session of 1851, was not in appear- 
ance so black as at heart it was. Commissioners were 
to be appointed to examine all California land claims. 
These claims were, within a stated period, to be pre- 
sented before the board by the claimants, the grantee 



484 CALIFORNIA. 

appearing for those who held under his grant, and a 
Californian pueblo appearing for its citizens. Claims 
not presented within the stated period were to he no 
longer regarded, but the lands in question were then to 
be considered as having been reincorporated in the public 
domain. All claimants must appear before the board 
as suitors against the United States, which, as repre- 
sented by its attorneys, was formally to resist their 
claims in every case. The board's decision was, how- 
ever, not to be regarded as final. On behalf of either 
party appeal would lie, from this decision, to the United 
States district court, and thence to the United States 
supreme court itself. And if the United States attor- 
neys should see fit, they might thus force the claimant, 
even in the clearest possible case, to fight for his own 
long universally recognized property in three successive 
courts, at an enormous expense. For, as is seen, all 
claims were to be treated alike. All, whether actually 
disputed by private individuals or not, were to be re- 
garded as called in question by the United States, which, 
of course, would sue to have them restored to the pub- 
lic domain. In this shape, substantially, the act was 
passed. 

The true spirit of the act was made plain at the next 
session of Congress, when Gwin introduced his infamous 
supplementary land bill, which failed to pass. The act 
of 1851 had been a device for delaying the just rec- 
ognition of all land claims in California, and for putting 
all honest Californian land-owners in the position of 
presumably fraudulent claimants, whose right to their 
own was to be considered as doubtful until proved by 
positive evidence, in possibly as many as three courts. 
The supplementary bill, if it had passed, was meant to 



LAND-TITLES AND POLITICS. 485 

encourage whoever had no rights in the land to steal 
from those who had rights, so long as these rights were 
thus unjustly held in abeyance under the act of 1851. 
If, said the bill, any one " in good faith " had settled 
on land, " believing it to be public land," and if, later, 
this land was found to be within the limits of a con- 
firmed Mexican grant, then the well-meaning squatter 
in question should be permitted — to retain his stolen 
tract of one hundred and sixty acres, while the Califor- 
nian land-owner was to be " compensated " by receiving 
a " floating title " to an equivalent number of acres, 
which he might choose where he could, from the public 
lands in the State. When we remember that the prin- 
cipal American objection to the Mexican grants was 
that they took up so much of the " finest agricultural 
lands of the State," the significance of the supplemen- 
tary bill becomes plain. One ought to add that Sena- 
tor Gwin never grew ashamed of this abortive attempt 
at predatory legislation, and mentions it with a certain 
pride in that manuscript statement of his career which 
he prepared for the use of Mr. Bancroft's library. Some 
of the California newspapers very vigorously condemned 
the unhappy bill at the time when it was first pre- 
sented, 1 and it was undoubtedly too advanced for the 
current public opinion of the State, however much it 
might fall short of the original purposes of the squat- 
ters. 

Into the complex and difficult history of the greater 
California land cases there is here no space to enter. 
The Land Act of 1851 made everything for a while 
doubtful. Case after case was appealed to the district 

1 See San Francisco Herald of May 29, 1852, for a letter on this 
topic, — a letter that the editor fully approves. 



486 CALIFORNIA. 

and then to the supreme courts ; numerous and very 
able lawyers were employed for many years, and the 
estates of the Californians were, for these years, in 
jeopardy. The effects may readily be imagined. The 
poor Californians, no business men to begin with, were 
thus forced into the most wearisome sort of business. 
They must, as it were, gamble for their own property, 
under the rules of an alien game, which they found 
largely unintelligible. Their property was, meanwhile, 
rendered hard to sell, and taxation fell upon them more 
heavily than upon the wandering and irresponsible 
mining population. Their lawyers they could pay only 
with the land itself. With squatters they had continu- 
ally to wrangle. The government had put them before 
the country in the position of presumably fraudulent 
claimants ; and they must therefore meet with an only 
too general suspicion that the best of them were actually 
such. Their position was demoralizing and dishearten- 
ing. The southern part of the State, where the most 
and the wealthiest of them lived, was, from Monterey 
downward, sadly neglected by early state legislation. 
For years it reaped little advantage from the gold dis- 
covery, and much injury from the presence of the gold- 
seekers in the north. Its natural, and, from its own 
point of view, justifiable efforts to escape from its un- 
happy position by means of a division of the State, were 
easily defeated by the healthy and yet merciless deter- 
mination of the bulk of the Americans of the north to 
permit no chance for slavery to gain a foothold on the 
coast. This determination forbade any successful effort 
to free the southern half of the State from the control 
of the existing constitution. 1 Not long before the out- 
1 The division of the State was a subject of agitation in the south, 



LAND-TITLES AND POLITICS. 487 

break of the civil war, further efforts were making 
towards the same end, but this time with a more pro- 
nounced political purpose. Yet, both first and last, all 
these efforts were doomed to fail, and for the poor na- 
tives, whom the general government thus so shamefully 
harassed, there was no deliverance from the neglect and 
taxation of the financially ill-managed state government. 
It is not to be wondered at that, under these circum- 
stances, the Calif ornians — who had never been exactly 
moral heroes — rapidly tended towards the utter degra- 
dation in which we had always meanly declared them to 
have been placed by nature. 

But as for us, who thus sought to despoil by legal means 
those whom we were too orderly to rob on any grand 
scale by violence, we could not altogether escape from 
the demoralization that we tried to inflict. " Woe unto 
thee, O land," it might very truly be said, " when thy 
land-holders are a dangerous class." But just such a 
class were for years, in some counties, our own lesser 

among the native Californians and others, during 1851, and often 
later. There can be no doubt that the native Californians concerned 
in the matter desired in good faith to be relieved from the unequal 
and serious burdens of the existing state government, and little doubt, 
also, that Southern politicians expected advantages to the cause of 
slavery from such a division, and therefore labored for it. See in the 
Alta (steamer edition), September 15, 1851, the call from citizens of 
San Diego for a convention to consider the division of the State ; and 
October 1, 1851, a further call from citizens of Los Angeles County, 
together with the report of a state division meeting at Los Angeles, 
and an Alta editorial, expressing very calmly the first natural north- 
ern sentiment on the matter. See, further, Alta (steamer edition) for 
October 15, containing further editorial and news, both bearing on the 
topic ; and November 1, containing a full report of the convention at 
Santa Barbara in favor of division. The movement, as here repre- 
sented, proved to be seriously disunited, and hence was ineffective. 
The Alta, while never growing violent in condemnation, still, of 
course, disapproved. 



488 CALIFORNIA. 

land-holders of American stock, and all because the 
claims that they had usurped were of uncertain legal 
validity, their undertakings consequently of doubtful 
profit, their business, as land-holders, resisting the Mex- 
ican grants, a sort of gambling, while their views of law, 
of duty, and of life, were darkened by a dim conscious- 
ness of their own injustice, and by a strong consciousness 
of their own insecurity. Whilst our state courts, with 
a noble severity, thanks to the general learning and good 
character of our lawyers, usually undertook rigidly to 
guard the vested rights of the Californian land-owners, 
during the long years that must elapse before the gen- 
eral government could be ready to confirm the doubtful 
grants, and while these courts were nearly always ready 
to eject naked trespassers, to give the unconfirmed but 
prima facie valid Mexican claim the benefit of the 
doubt, and to interpret liberally the terms of the often 
rudely expressed grants, still it could not always be 
profitable or even possible for a Californian land-owner, 
or for his legal successors, to resist all squatters. Some- 
times, as in the notorious and infamous case of the first 
foundation of the now so fine and progressive city of 
Oakland, a great tract of land would be lost to its own- 
ers by the deeds of some crowd of deliberate and un- 
principled trespassers, 1 who would not even undertake 
to justify themselves by any such theory of predatory 
morality as had been preached in the gospel of the Sac- 
ramento squatters. Oftener, when smaller parcels had 
been seized here or there by squatters, the native land- 
claimant, or those who held under him, found it possible 
and convenient, perhaps after years of bickering and 

1 See the Centennial History of Alameda County, chap, xxix., for 
an account of this affair. 



LAND-TITLES AND POLITICS. 489 

litigation, to compromise with the settler for a small 
sum, and so to give him a clear title. But, during all 
these intervening years, how unhappy the position of the 
squatter himself ! He was raising his crops on land 
that he professed to regard as a portion of the public 
domain, to be acquired by him through preemption. 
In fact, however, he was using a large part of his income 
in resisting the various suits brought against him by the 
claimant under the old grant. His pretended " quarter- 
section " of public land was hardly a salable possession. 
A fellow-settler, who might have chosen to buy a title to 
some other bit of land from the original claimant, might 
be his next neighbor, and might even some day buy the 
Mexican title to his own tract. Then would arise bit- 
terness of the worst sort, not now between American 
and CaJifornian, but between the American fellow-set- 
tlers. Quarrels that would soon lead to threats, and 
that might at any moment lead to assaults, and so to 
murder, were such a settler's daily bread for year after 
year. Until the supreme court at Washington should 
reach the case and decide it, nay, until the official sur- 
vey of the tract, if the grant was confirmed to the Cal- 
ifornian claimant, should be completed and again ap- 
proved (perchance once more, after further appeals on 
the survey to the supreme court), until all this should be 
ended, there was often no relief to the quarrelsome life 
of the persistent squatter, unless indeed his neighbor's 
shot-gun should some day cut short his litigious misery. 
And this was the life of thousands of petty land-holders 
in California, during the years when land litigation 
was most serious. No wonder that, under such circum- 
stances, two great evils were brought upon the State, 
whose effects we have not yet had quite time to outgrow : 



490 CALIFORNIA. 

the one a negative evil, the long and lamentable obstruc- 
tion of the material prosperity of the State, by the dis- 
couragement of agricultural enterprise ; the other a pos- 
itive evil, the moral mischief done to the country by the 
encouragement offered to thriftless and disorderly squat- 
ters, and by the exclusion of a great number of the best 
sort of farmers' families, who left the State early, or 
never came to it at all, because of the uncertainty of 
land titles, and because of their fear of the quarrels and 
disorders of this long transition period. 

If one adds to this picture that of those numerous de- 
graded Spanish or half-breed outlaws, the creatures of 
our own injustice, the sons, sometimes, or the former ser- 
vants of the great land-owners whom we had robbed, if 
one remembers how they infested country roads, harassed 
lonely farms, assaulted the mail-coaches, and plundered 
the miners, through all these weary years, one sees at 
length in full how our injustice avenged itself upon us, 
and by what misery we paid for having deliberately set 
at naught fundamental conditions of social existence. 
From the first moment of the conquest until the end of 
these early days we showed how we were come to this 
land to get ourselves our own private enjoyments ; but 
we also showed how we thereby did get for ourselves 
nothing so much as public calamities. To this contin- 
ual petty disorder there was indeed at last a relief. The 
greater claims being decided, the more serious quarrels 
ended, the State was at length free, in the years since 
1870, to develop far more rapidly her material and 
moral resources, to attract a large new population, and 
to cultivate the arts of civilization. Yet even to-day one 
hears occasionally of the old sort of land-quarrel, with 
its brutal and sometimes bloody consequences. And 



LAND-TITLES AND POLITICS. 491 

meanwhile, if one complains of the unfortunate concen- 
tration of the land in a comparatively few hands, of the 
lack of small proprietors in certain parts of the State, 
and of the evils attendant upon such a state of things, 
one has to remember that these evils also are in great 
part a result of the policy which, instead of encouraging 
the old Californians to sell their grants in small tracts 
to new-comers, forced them at length to part with their 
lands in vast tracts to their lawyers, or to scheming 
speculators, so that these profited by the misfortunes of 
the Californians, to the lasting injury of the whole State. 
— " You will not fail," Buchanan had said in the secret 
dispatch to Larkin, " prudently to warn the government 
and people of California," and " to arouse in their 
bosoms that love of liberty and independence so natural 
to the American continent." " If the people should de- 
sire to unite their destinies with ours, they would be re- 
ceived as brethren," Buchanan had added, thus assur- 
ing the Californians of " the cordial sympathy and 
friendship of the president." Such were our sacred 
promises to these people in 1845, promises none the less 
sacred because they were part of an intrigue. And such 
is the wretched tale of: how we kept faith with our 
victims. 

III. EARLY POLITICAL CONFLICTS. 

We must now glance, in conclusion, at the causes de- 
termining the purely partisan political life in California 
during the period with which we deal. 

The somewhat diminished enthusiasm of the Ameri- 
cans in California for their own national government, 
which had, from the outset, neglected them, was still 
equal to the task of taking sides, with some bitterness, 



492 CALIFORNIA. 

in the great national political questions. The skill of 
Southern politicians present in California, and the irre- 
sistible course of events in the political world at that 
moment, at once gave the Democratic party the upper 
hand in the State, and favored, on the whole, the South- 
ern wing of that party. Very evil seems, from one 
point of view, this partisan influence in state politics. 
For the early political life of this region, upon whose 
destiny the great national questions themselves could 
for the moment have little immediate influence, was 
thus directed by party men, whose actual objects must 
of course be, under such circumstances, little save office 
and patronage. In largely academic discussions of na- 
tional questions that, vastly significant in themselves, 
were here, for some years, used chiefly as pretenses, 
and in quarrels and bargains concerning the distribution 
of offices, time was, therefore, spent that ought to have 
been devoted to the inner political growth of the new 
State. The " great heroes " of those days generally 
quarreled over purely personal ambitions, and grew 
great because they were skillful in managing corrupt 
political organizations. But all this evil had another 
side. When the American lets the corrupt party man- 
agers rule him, he does so with an immoral but still 
often clever submissiveness, because party wrangles not 
only are in themselves amusing, but also are an excel- 
lent preventive of any elaborately dangerous and revolu- 
tionary legislation. Early California was full of social 
problems. It is characteristic of the people that, in 
dealing with these problems, their legislators were gen- 
erally forced to restrict themselves to very conservative 
enactments. The politicians might, indeed, squander 
public money, or sell offices for votes ; but, in general, 



LAND-TITLES AND POLITICS. 493 

they might not try, nor even propose, any revolutionary 
social schemes. This conservatism used as its instru- 
ment, very frequently, the corrupt party organizations 
themselves. 

The later history of the squatter agitation is in point 
as illustrating this tendency. The Settlers' party failed 
from the outset to accomplish anywhere nearly as much 
as it desired in the way of getting various state laws 
passed for harassing or for indirectly despoiling, by any 
plausible device, the Californian land-owners, during 
the pendency of the great land litigation. For this 
party had again and again to submit itself to the des- 
potism of the greater party organizations. The main 
object of the Democratic or other leaders was to get 
a senatorship, or to control patronage, or to do some 
like thing. To this end, one took sides in national pol- 
itics ; one abused, for instance, all supposed abolition- 
ists ; one talked of Jeffersonian principles ; one ap- 
peared as the champion of the people ; or, above all, 
one manipulated party conventions. These activities 
led towards one's goal. Not so, however, could one 
succeed if one offended everybody else to please the 
squatters. Yet, to satisfy the Settlers' party, one would 
have had to do this. This party, indeed, formed an in- 
fluential faction in state politics for years, and toiled to 
get various sorts of statutes passed for harassing the 
Californian grant-holders. The schemes proposed were 
often ingenious, and tried to avoid obvious constitutional 
objections. Once, in 1856, these squatters did succeed 
in getting passed a very dangerous statute, which was 
ultimately declared unconstitutional. But they failed, 
in the end, to get a constitutionally valid and legally 
effective statute into the state law-books to carry out 



494 CALIFORNIA. 

any of their direct or indirect designs. Since we as a 
body hated the Californian land-claimants so bitterly, 
our general although not perfect forbearance in the 
matter of our legal enactments concerning them must be 
attributed partly to our instinctive good sense, and partly 
to the strictness of that aforementioned corrupt party 
discipline itself, which, by demanding the submission of 
ail individual interests to the ends of the party, kept in 
the background people who, like the squatters, were dis- 
posed to assert their independence and to disorganize 
the political parties for their own purposes. 

In the first legislature, which was held at San Jose, 
much important business was done under great physical 
difficulties, and with the disadvantage of the presence 
of too many careless and disorderly members in the 
body. By the end of 1850 the political parties were 
in a fair way to be organized, and the legislature of 

1851 was largely spent in a struggle over the election 
of the United States senator to replace Colonel Fre- 
mont, whose " short term " was soon to expire. The 
election, after many ballotings, had to be postponed for 
a year ; and, during 1851, the Democratic party first 
clearly showed its supremacy in the State, and elected 
Mr. John Bigler to the state governorship. This offi- 
cial served two terms, — a pojmlar and unprincipled 
politician, whose influence was in no wise for good. 1 In 

1852 the United States senator was elected, Colonel 
John B. Weller getting the position. But at this point 
began in earnest the struggle between the two heroes of 

1 It was during Bigler's administration that the first agitation 
against the Chinese in California took place, although the question at 
that time had a very different appearance from the one which it has 
since assumed. 



LAND-TITLES AND POLITICS. 495 

early California politics, — Broderick, who fully in- 
tended to get the rank of senator when the next vacancy 
should occur, and Gwin, who had been one of the first 
pair of senators elected, and who now confidently 
looked forward to reelection in 1855. The remarkably 
dramatic struggle of several subsequent years, between 
the Southerner and the Irishman, 1 we are not concerned 
to follow in this book, the more so as its most im- 
portant scenes lie outside of our chosen period. The 
reader may be referred, if he will, to the able, interest- 
ing, and not unamusing book of Mr. James O'Meara, 2 
where the whole story is told with a worshipful admira- 
tion of the heroic deeds that took place during the war- 
fare. A characteristic event in the struggle was the 
effort of Broderick to get the legislature, in 1854, to 
elect him to the senatorship one year in advance of the 
regular time. A bill to authorize such an election was 
introduced in Broderick's interest, the idea being that, 
as Broderick had a majority in the joint vote of the 
two houses of this legislature, no opportunity ought to 
be given to his fellow Democrats to destroy this major- 
ity before the next legislature should meet. The bill 
was defeated only after a long struggle, in which brib- 
ery, liquor, threatened violence, and even actually 
attempted violence were not lacking on both sides. 
Before the next legislature met, Broderick was in a 
very small minority in his own party ; but the crisis 
of the Kansas controversies enabled him erelong to come 
to the front in politics as an opponent of the ultra- 

1 David Broderick, although born in America, was the son of an 
Irish stone-cutter, and grew up amid Irish surroundings. He learned 
the political art in New York, under Tammany influences. 

2 Broderick and Gwin, San Francisco, 1881. 



496 CALIFORNIA. 

Southern wing of his party, and as a champion of free- 
dom. He alone could cope with the influence of Gwin, 
whom he outdid in the management of primary elec- 
tions and of conventions, as Gwin, in turn, had the ad- 
vantage of him in political experience, in social position, 
in oratorical skill, and, for some years, in the actual 
possession of power. But Broderick was the better 
loved by his friends. He was generous and warm- 
hearted, he hated the Southern aristocracy, he repre- 
sented the pride of the born freeman and of the labor- 
er's son ; and although political and other principles 
never meant much to him, in comparison with personal 
success, and although he, like most of his opponents, 
looked upon the State as an oyster, to be opened as one 
might, he nevertheless managed, in the sequel, to seem 
a sort of leader in the struggle against the extension of 
slavery, and so as a representative of the good cause on 
the Pacific coast. With his later career, with his elec- 
tion to the Senate in 1857, with his disgraceful bargains 
over the second senatorship on that occasion, with his 
brief career at Washington, and with the tragedy that 
first fully made him a popular hero in 1859, when he 
was killed by Judge Terry in a duel, the limits of our 
task forbid us to deal. Broderick' s name has ever 
since been, for many, a name to conjure with, although 
one asks in vain what legislative work of importance he 
can be said to have accomplished. Legislative work, 
however, is the last thing that one may demand of a 
man of Broderick's position and popular reputation. 

An episode in this struggle and in the political his- 
tory of the State was the brief and quite fruitless suc- 
cess of the Know-Nothing party in 1855. Many had 
looked to this party for the salvation of the State from 



LAND-TITLES AND POLITICS. 497 

corrupt influences. Its actual success, however, resulted 
from its alliance at this election with the ultra-Southern 
Democrats, whose only desire, at the moment, was to 
defeat Broderick. A victory so won meant nothing, 
and led to nothing, save the choice of an incompetent 
governor, — Neely Johnson, — and a new disappoint- 
ment for many of the better citizens of California. The 
Know-Nothing movement hereupon quickly came to an 
end, and the Democrats assumed once more their natu- 
ral position at the head of affairs, which they kept until 
the outbreak of the war. On the whole, the early years 
of California state politics furnish a decidedly unsatis- 
factory picture, so long as one looks at the positive re- 
sults. Some very good legislation was, indeed, accom- 
plished for San Francisco interests, but it was marred 
by some decidedly bad work relating to the same city. 
Some serious mistakes, such as the first Foreign Miners' 
tax, were promptly corrected, and some problems of the 
new social order were well dealt with ; but as to the 
whole, rather on the negative side, rather in the dan- 
gers avoided than in the positive legislative work done, 
must the value of the early political activity be placed. 
The conflicting interests present in the young State 
urged often to very hasty legislative action, and, despite 
political corruption, — yes, often because of such cor- 
ruption, — such hasty and dangerous action was again 
and again avoided. 

The lesson of the legislative work of these early years 
is one very common in American history. As we find 
everywhere in our land, the danger of popular sover- 
eignty, at least in times of peace, is not so much its 
hastiness as its slothfulness, its corrupt love of ease, its 
delight in old and now meaningless phrases, and in the 
32 



498 CALIFORNIA. 

men who use these phrases. Such men do not destroy 
the existing social order, but while preserving it from 
sudden injury, they fatten themselves upon the slow 
decay that goes on in its less vigorous parts. The people 
do not permit these parasites to do much positive mis- 
chief ; and the party organizations are, on the whole, 
conservative forces. But what the people permit the 
party managers to do is to stand in the way of true and 
healthy progress, and to cause public needs to grow 
dangerously great, before the selfish political squabbles 
can be subordinated to the satisfaction of these needs. 
In a very new part of the country, however, where the 
social order is a tender plant, and is capable of a rapid 
and healthy growth of its own, while it is very easily 
endangered by any injurious external assaults, this ten- 
dency of ours to tolerate political corruption rather than 
political officiousness is certainly far more prudent than 
the reverse tendency would be. While we condemn 
the immorality of such toleration of corrupt men, let us 
then not forget the relatively good effects of this very 
tolerance in many new lands, and in California in par- 
ticular. A people with less political skill than our own 
would have suffered far more from earnest but visionary 
schemers than we in California suffered from the whole 
crew of selfish politicians. While we submitted to these 
latter we still actually used their own partisan phrases 
and their personal ambitions as the instruments for 
impeding the course of dangerous legislation, and so we 
saved ourselves, sometimes, not indeed from the just 
penalties of our political sins, but from the consequences 
of sins that we were happily able to avoid committing. 

One word here in anticipation of later events. During 
the civil war, California, which really could not have 



LAND-TITLES AND POLITICS. 499 

been led out of the Union by the most skillful of party- 
managers, still, having seemed at the outset a trifle in 
danger, gained by the consent of the government an 
exemption from the direct burden of the war, for which 
it probably well repaid by the assistance that its treasure 
gave to the government during the long financial cliffi- 
jfrculties. Many of its citizens did indeed take per- 
sonal part on one side or the other. But they left the 
State to do so, and at home all remained tranquil. The 
prevailing sentiment of the State was unmistakably 
loyal. The close of the war found the new land rapidly 
and steadily progressing. The coming of the great 
railroad introduced, a few years later, a new life, with 
fresh responsibilities and trials, so that thenceforth the 
golden California of the early days fades farther and 
farther into the background, and a great agricultural 
and horticultural country to-day works, in its way, upon 
the problems of its social life, while it is still under the 
influence of the traditions of that golden past. 

IV. CONCLUSION". 

The race that has since grown up in California, as 
the outcome of these early struggles, is characterized 
by very marked qualities of strength and weakness, 
some of which, perchance, even a native Californian 
like the author, who neither can nor would outgrow his 
healthy local traits, may still be able to note and con- 
fess. A general sense of social irresponsibility is, even 
to-day, the average Californian's easiest failing. Like 
his father, he is probably a born wanderer, who will feel 
as restless in his -farm life, or in his own town, as his 
father felt in his. He will have little or no sense of 
social or of material barriers, he will perchance hunt for 



500 CALIFORNIA. 

himself a new home somewhere else in the world, or in 
the old home will long for some speculative business that 
promises easy wealth, or again, on the other hand, he 
will undertake some great material labor that attracts 
him by its imposing difficulty. His training at home 
gives him a curious union of provincial prejudice with 
a varied, if not very exact, knowledge of the sorts of 
things that there are in the world. For his surround- 
ings from infancy have been in one sense of a cosmopol- 
itan character ; while much of his training has been 
rigidly or even narrowly American. He is apt to lack 
a little, moreover, complete devotion to the life within 
the household, because, as people so often have pointed 
out, the fireside, an essential institution of our English 
race, is of such small significance in the climate of Cali- 
fornia. In short, the Californian has too often come to 
love mere fullness of life, and to lack reverence for the 
relations of life. 

And yet, as we have seen, the whole lesson of his 
early history, rightly read, is a lesson in reverence for 
the relations of life. It was by despising, or at least by 
forgetting them, that the early community entered into 
the valley of the shadow of death ; and there was salva- 
tion for the community, in those days, only by virtue of 
its final and hard-learned submission to what it had de- 
spised and forgotten. This lesson, I confess, has come 
home to me personally, as I have studied this early his- 
tory, with a quite unexpected force. I had always 
thought of the old days as times of fine and rough labors, 
amusements and crimes, but not as a very rational his- 
torical process. I have learned, as I have toiled for 
a while over the sources, to see in these days a process 
of divinely moral significance. And, as a Californian, 



LAND-TITLES AND POLITICS. 501 

I am glad to be able to suggest what I have found, plain 
and simple as it is, to any fellow-Californian who may 
perchance note in himself the faults of which I make 
confession. Here in the early history are these faults, 
writ large, with their penalties, and the only possible 
salvation from them. 

After all, however, our lesson is an old and simple 
one. It is the State, the Social Order, that is divine. 
We are all but dust, save as this social order gives us 
life. When we think it our instrument, our plaything, 
and make our private fortunes the one object, then this 
social order rapidly becomes vile to us ; we call it sordid, 
degraded, corrupt, unspiritual, and ask how we may 
escape from it forever. But if we turn again and serve 
the social order, and not merely ourselves, we soon find 
that what we are serving is simply our own highest 
spiritual destiny in bDdily form. It is never truly sor- 
did or corrupt or unspiritual ; it is only we that are so 
when we neglect our duty. 



Abalos, Senorita, 387, 3S8. 

Adams & Co., failure of, 431. 

Aiken, Dr., witness for the 
at the Downieville lynching of 1851, 
372. 

Alcaldes in California after conquest, 
200-206. 

" Alta California," newspaper, 3S8. 

Alvarado, Governor, 25, sqq. ; revolu- 
tion by, 25 ; conflicts and success 
of, 26-28 ; quarrel of, with foreign- 
ers, 28 ; validity of his grant to Sut- 
ter, 470, 471. 

American character, general remarks 
on, as shown in California, 1, 2, 34, 
47, 63, 66, 76, 151-156, 198, 212, 218, 
222, 225-230, 234, 238, 239, 255, 259, 
271, 273-278, 279, 280, 300, 304, 305, 
324, 327, 328, 335, 353, 356, 357-368, 
371-374, 398, 466, 468, 487-491, 492, 
498. For particulars see under 
Americans in California ; Calif or- 
nians, native; Popular justice ; So- 
ciety, state of; Women in Califor- 
nia ; San Francisco. 

Americans in California before the 
conquest, 34-47. 

Americans in California in 1846, sup- 
posed danger of their position, 87, 
91, 93-111. 

Americans in California, during the in- 
terregnum, 198-270 ; discontent of, 
198-213 ; land-hunger of, 206-211 ; 
at San Francisco, 213-220 ; as gold- 
seekers, 220-234; routes by which 
they reached California, 234-246 ; 
struggles of, for a constitution, 246- 
270 ; constitutional theories of, in 
1849, 248, 249 ; public amusements 
of, 227, 392-398. Further references 
under San Francisco, Society, Pop- 
ular justice, and Women. 

"Annals of San Francisco," cited, 77, 
178, 179, 189, 213, 214, 219, 220, 223, 
257, 380, 386, 389, 390, 393, 394-397, 



399, 401, 408, 409, 420 ; criticised in 
particular, 393-397. 

Arce, Lieutenant, 59, 105. 

Argiiello, commandante at San Fran- 
cisco, 17 ; chosen governor, 19. 

Argiiello, Concepcion, 17. 

Arkansas miners, dispossessed for 
trespass upon Chinese miners, 367, 
note. 

Arrillaga, 17. 

Auger, "Voyage en Californie," 
cited, 309, 365, 366. 

Ayala, Lieutenant, 14. 

Baker, Col. E. D., 458. 

Baldridge, Wm., statements of, on 
Bear Flag affair, 61, 62, 69, 72. 

Balls in the mines, 351, 352 and note. 

Bancroft, Mr. George, instructions of, 
to Sloat, 128. 

Bancroft, H. H., cited, 8, 9, sqq. to 
page 30 ; also 174, et passim. 

Bancroft, H. H., Larkin papers pos- 
sessed by, 38, 96 ; their value, 39, et 
passim ; as discoverer of Larkin dis- 
patch, 133, 134, 142. 

Baptists in San Francisco, 401. 

Bardt, Dr., flogged for theft in 1852 at 
Johnson's Bar, 333, 334. 

Barrows' " Oregon " cited, 119. 

Bartlett, Lieutenant, 205. 

Bates, Mrs., cited, 384. 

Bear Flag affair, 53, 58-83 ; reflections 
on, 155, 156 ; Bidwell on, 100-102 ; 
Calif omian hostility as a cause for, 
93-111 ; J. H. Hittell on, 117 ; Gen- 
eral Fremont on, 120-123. See also 
Fremont, Ide, Californians, Sono- 
ma, Gillespie. 

Benicia, founded and named, 213. 

Benton, Thomas H., Senator, letters 
to, by Fremont, in May, 1846, 104, 
108, 132 ; statements by, concerning 
Bear Flag affair, 88-92 ; letter for, 
in Larkin' s hand, 104; projects of, 



504 



INDEX. 



113 ; position of, 114 ; opposes 
Gwin's Land Bill in 1851, 483. 

Benton, Rev. Dr., his "California 
Pilgrim" cited, 233. 

Bereyessa, 82. 

Bidwell, Mr. John, statement on Bear 
Flag affair, 99-102, 121. 

Bidwell's Bar, opposition to foreign 
miners at, 367. 

Bigler, John, Governor, 494. 

"Biglow Papers," 15G. 

Borthwick's " Three Years in Califor- 
nia" cited, 311, 317, 360. 

Botts, C. T., 251, 269. 

Boundary question in constitutional 
convention, 264-269. See also Di- 
vision of California. 

Brace, executed, by Vigilance Com- 
mittee, 464. 

Brannan, Samuel, 197, 198, 219; in 
the affair of February 22, 1851, 410, 
411 ; in the first Vigilance Commit- 
tee, 419, 420. 

Bridgeport, lynching at, 318. 

Broderick, David, 263, 495, 496. 

Brooks, J. T., his "Four Months in 
the Gold Mines" cited, 289, sqq. ; 
his experiences as typical of mining 
life in 1848, 289-301. 

Bryant, Edwin, his " What I saw in 
California " cited, 43, 63, 77, 189. 

Buchanan, 118, 136, 137 ; views of, on 
the political situation in California, 
253, 255. See also under Cabinet of 
Polk. 

" Bulletin," the San Francisco, as so- 
cial force under King's manage- 
ment. See under King, James, of 
William. 

" Burke Rocker," 301. 

Burnett, his "Reminiscences of an 
Old Pioneer" cited, 251, 257; as 
governor of California, 270. 

Burr, juror at the Downieville lynch- 
ing of July 5, 1851, 373. 

Cabinet of Polk, its plans for getting 
California, 50-54; the 'fourth 
plan," id., 57, 84, 87, 92, 93, 115-119, 
123, 138, 139 ; the real cabinet plan, 
125-147 ; the Larkki dispatch, 136, 
137 ; the plan further criticised, 
152-156 ; views of, on the situation 
in California in 1848, 253, 255. 

Cabrillo, early voyage of, 9. 

Cahuenga, capitulation at, 193, 194. 

Calaveras, disorder in the mines of 
that region in 1852, 343. 

California, geographical outlines of, 
3-7 ; climate, 7, 8 ; discovery of 
Lower California, 9 ; name, 9 ; first 
explorations of the coast of Upper 



California, 9-11 ; plans for settle- 
ment, 11, 12 ; settlement in 1769, 
13 ; Spanish period, 14-19 ; Russian 
visits, 17, 18 ; transition to Mexican 
rule, 19, 20 ; Mexican period, 20-30 ; 
character of the native population, 
30-34 ; character and life of Ameri- 
cans in California ibefore 184G, 34- 
46 ; American designs on California, 
48, sqq. ; supposed English designs 
on California, 164-173 ; beginnings, 
problems, and plans of the Ameri- 
can conquest in June, 1846, 50-150 ; 
completion of conquest, 174, sqq. ; 
revolt and re-conquest, 184-197 ; in- 
terregnum, 198-270; constitutional 
history of California during inter- 
regnum, 204-210, 246-270 ; gold dis- 
covery and its importance, 220-223 ; 
emigration to California in 1849, 
224-246; admission of State, 270; 
social dangers of, during the gold 
period, 271, sqq. ; philosophy of the 
history of the mining-times, 272- 
278 ; evolution of disorder in Cali- 
fornia, 278-282 ; mining-life in 1848, 
284-301 ; mining-life in 1849-50, 301- 
307 ; later mining-life, 308-376 ; im- 
portance of San Francisco in Cali- 
fornia history, 377 ; outlines of San 
Francisco history, 378-465 ; Califor- 
nia as affected by the land troubles, 
467-491 ; early state politics, 491- 
499 ; lessons of early California his- 
tory, 499-501. 

California, the, voyage of, 235, 238. 

California, Lower, 9 ; Jesuits expelled 
from, 11. 

California battalion, discontent of, af- 
ter conquest, 200. 

" California Star," the, 66, 198, 204- 
208, 219. 

" Calif ornian," the, cited, 63, 198, 
211. 

Californians, native, characterization 
of, 30-34 ; relations of, to Ameri- 
cans before 1846, 36, 37 ; their posi- 
tion and rights in 1846, 51 ; their 
views of the Bear Flag outbreak, 
79-82 ; supposed hostility of, as a 
cause for the Bear Flag affair, 93- 
111 ; Sloat's instructions from the 
U. S. government regarding them, 
125-128, 157-160 ; Larkin's instruc- 
tions regarding them, 135-140, 153, 
491 ; Larkin's intrigue with them, 
162-164 ; English relations to, 164- 
172 ; Stockton's bearing towards, 
177-179, 180-184, 190 ; treatment of, 
by American officials, immediately 
before the revolt of 1846-47, 184- 
189 ; revolt of, 189 ; friendship of, 



INDEX. 



505 



to Captain Fremont, 186, 195 ; feel- 
ings of, during the interregnum, 198 ; 
dangerous position of, 207 ; unhappy 
state of, in 1849, 256 ; in the consti- 
tutional convention, 261, 267 ; in the 
mines, 290, 291, 364; land difficul- 
ties of, in later years, 467, sqq. , 480- 
491 ; efforts of, for a division of the 
State, 486, 487 ; disastrous condition 
of, 486, 490, 491. 

Camp life, effects of, on personal char- 
acter, as illustrated in Donner party 
in 1846, 44; further remarks on, 
245, 300. 

Cannan, murdered by Californian wo- 
man at Downieville in 1851, 370; 
lynching of the woman, 371-373. 

Capital punishment, as administered 
by the miners, discussed, 336-338 ; 
bad state law concerning, 337. 

Capron, "History of California," cited, ! 
309, 317, 335. 

"Carlos," a Sonoran, hanged at Moque- 
lumne Hill, 321-323. 

Carrillo, Carlos, 27. 

Carrillo, Tomas M., 294. 

Casey, assassin of James King, of Wil- 
liam, 438, 449 ; seizure and execu- 
tion of, by the second Vigilance i 
Committee of San Francisco, 446, i 
447, 448, 451, 452. 

Castillero, Andre's, 26. 

Castro, Jose, 24; as commandante gen- • 
eral, 29 ; difficulty with Captain 
Fr6mont, 54, 55 ; reported hostility j 
of, 59 ; General Fremont on this | 
difficulty, 114, 115 ; Senator Ben- I 
ton on the same, 88, 91 ; controversy I 
with Pio Pico, 94, 96, 107 ; Ameri- 
can opinion of, in June, 1846, 107, | 
108 ; meeting of, with Pio Pico, 175 ; | 
in command at Los Angeles, 176 ; 
negotiations with Stockton, 180 ; 
flight to Mexico, id. 

Catholics in San Francisco, 401. 

" Caxton " as political writer in 1856, 
456. 

Cermenon, 10. 

Chagres River, 239. 

Chico, Governor, 24. 

Children in California, 399. 

Chinese, 367, 494. 

Civil War, California in, 499. 

Clapp, Mrs. L. A. C. See "Shirley." 

Clergymen, in San Francisco, 397, 
400, 401-403. 

Climate of California, 7, 8 ; effect of, 
on health, 8. 

Coast Range, 3, 6. 

Coleman, Mr. Wm. T., in February, 
1851, 411, 412 ; in the first Vigilance 
Committee, 419 ; in the second Vig- 



ilance Committee, 441, sqq. ; his 
statements cited, 441, 442, 445, 457, 
462 ; his interviews with Governor 
Johnson on the Vigilance Commit- 
tee plans, 441-446. 
Coloma, locality of the earliest gold 

discovery, 220, 291, 319. 
Colton, Rev. Walter, his "Three 
Years in California" cited, 62, 186, 
223 ; his character, 190. 
Congress, U. S., fails to provide gov- 
ernment for California in 1848 and 
1849, 252, 253, 256. 
Conquest, American, difficulty of de- 
scribing, 48, 49 ; importance of, 49 ; 
history of plans for and early scenes 
of, 52-150 ; Sloat's conquest, 157- 
176 ; Stockton's undertakings, 177- 
184 ; the revolt and re-conquest, 184- 
195. 

Constitution of 1849, preparation for, 
during the interregnum, 199-213, 
246-257 ; formation of, in conven- 
tion, 257-270 ; adoption of, 270. 

Constitutional convention (see also 
Constitution of 1840), abortive ef- 
forts for a convention, 257 •, con- 
vention called, 257 ; meeting of 
convention, 259-270 ; material dif- 
ficulties of the members, 260 ; tabu- 
lar classification of members, 260 ; 
political positions of members, 261, 
262 ; Southern politicians in, 263- 
266; Wm. Gwin's work in, 262-269; 
boundary controversy in, 264-269. 

Cooke, Lieutenant, 192 ; his " His- 
tory of the Conquest" cited, 189, 
note. 

Cora, assassin of General Richardson, 
447 ; his arrest by Vigilance Com- 
mittee, id. ; his marriage and execu- 
tion, 452. 

Coronel, Signor, statement of, cited, 
167, 176, 186, 188. 

Cortes, 9. 

Cowie, 81. 

Coyote, the, 285, 339. 

"Coyote-holes," 312. 

Cradle-mining, 287, 288, 301. 

Crespi, 14. 

Crosby, C. E. O., statement on con- 
stitutional convention cited, 263, 
note. 

Cutts' " Conquest of New Mexico 
and California " cited, 88, 125. 

Dana, R. H., remarks on the Cali- 
fornians, 32 ; date of his visit to 
California, 36. 

Davis, W. H., his MS. "Glimpses of 
the Past " cited, 38. 

Degroot, Mr. Henry, cited, 296. 



506 



INDEX. 



Delano, A., cited, 239, 245, 317. 

Diablo, Mt,, 6. 

Division of California proposed at va- 
rious times, 264-269, 486, 487 and 
note. 

Dormer party, 43-45, 197. 

Downieville, disgraceful lynching at, 
in 1851, 368-374. 

Drake, Sir Francis, voyage of, 9. 

Easterbrook, a miner, hanged for the 
murder of his partner in 1851, at 
Shasta, 329-332. 

Echeandia, Governor, 21, 22. 

Emigrants of 1846, 43-45. 

English schemes in California, 91, 92, 
154. See Seymour. 

Episcopalians in San Francisco, 401. 

Fages, Pedro, 14. 

Family life in San Francisco in early 
days, 403-407, 434, 435. 

Farragut, Commodore, 459. 

Ferralo, 9. 

Figueroa, Jos<3, Governor, 23, 24. 

Fire-engines in the San Francisco 
fires of 1851, 387. 

Fires, the great. See under San Fran- 
cisco. 

Flogging as a popular miners' penalty 
discussed, 335. 

Flores, J. M., 189, 190. 

Ford, Lieutenant, 73, 78, 79. 

Foreign miners, on the way to Cali- 
fornia, 236-239 ; treatment of, in 
1849, 305, 358 ; treatment of, alter 
1849, 358-368 ; illustrations of thi3 
treatment, 348, 352, 353-355, 368- 
374. 

Foreign Miners' Tax Law of 1850, 
358; repeal of, 359; criticism of, 
360 ; troubles caused by, at Sonora, 
in 1850, 360-362. 

Foster's Bar, opposition to foreign 
miners at, 367. 

Foster's " Gold Regions of Califor- 
nia " cited, 223, 287. 

Fourgeaud, Dr. , 219. 

Fowler, 81. 

Francesca. See Benicia. 

Franciscans, appear in Lower Califor- 
nia, 11 ; settle Upper California, 12 ; 
missions of, 12-16 ; work of, criti- 
cised, 16. See also Missions, and 
Secularisation. 
Fremont, John C, his visit to Califor- 
nia in 1844, and his Report, 42, 43 ; 
the usual interpretation of his acts in 
the early part of the conquest men- 
tioned, 53, 57 ; his appearance in Cal- 
ifornia in 1846, 54 ; quarrel with Cas- 
tro, 54, 55 ; retirement towards Or- 



egon, 55 ; is overtaken by Gillespie, 
56 ; information of some sort deliv- 
ered to him, 56 ; he returns to the 
Sacramento Valley, 58 ; rumors of 
Castro's hostility circulated, 58, 59 ; 
consequent seizure of Arce's horses 
by F.'s order, 59 ; beginning of 
Bear Flag affair, 60 ; F. holds at 
first aloof, 61 ; Ide's interview with 
F., 68 ; acts of certain Bear Flag 
men under F.'s orders, 70 ; F. 
reaches Sonoma, 79 ; San Rafael 
campaign, id. ; killing of Karo broth- 
ers, 80 ; F.'s acts out of connection 
with Sloat's instructions, 85 ; risks 
run through F.'s conduct, 86, 87 ; 
F. 's friends and their past explana- 
tions of his conduct, 87-93; F.'s 
own former explanation, 93 ; Cali- 
forman hostility no explanation 
for F.'s conduct, 93-111 ; F.'s rela- 
tions to Gillespie and Larkin, 103- 
108 ; F. 's letter to Benton as evi- 
dence of his motives, 108, 109 ; 
probable use of forged proclama- 
tions by F. and Gillespie, 109, 110 ; 
F.'s own present explanation of his 
conduct, 111-123 ; mysteries deep- 
ened by this explanation, 123-129 ; 
only one dispatch from the govern- 
ment was known to F. , and this the 
Larkin dispatch, 129-133 ; summary 
of F.'s position, 134, 135; actual 
contents of the Larkin dispatch, 
135-138 ; refutation of F.'s justifica- 
tion of his conduct, 138-141 ; sup- 
plementary evidence, 141-147 ; re- 
joinder of F. in final interview, 147, 
148 ; reflections hereon, 149, 150 ; 
further characterization of F. 's con- 
duct, 155, 156; F.'s relations to 
Sloat, 157-161 ; F.'s conduct as re- 
lated to the English designs, 168 ; 
F.'s interview with Stockton, and 
its consequences, 177, 182; F. at 
San Diego, 177 ; personal good will 
of F. towards Californians after the 
conquest, 185, 186 ; F. during the 
revolt and re - conquest, 189, 190, 
193-195 ; quarrel with Kearny, 196 ; 
F. as popular authority for Sutter's 
title, 470 ; as U. S. senator from 
California, 494. 
Frenchmen, in the mines, see For- 
eign miners; in the Vigilance Com- 
mittee of San Francisco, 447, 456. 
Funeral in the mines, a, as witnessed 
by " Shirley," 347, 348. 

Galvez, Jose' de, 12. 
Gambling in San Francisco, 394, 425, 
436, 437. 



INDEX. 



507 



Gillespie, Lieutenant Archibald, meet- 
ing with Captain Fremont at Kla- 
math Lake, 56 ; mystery of his mis- 
sion, 57, 58, 87, sqq. ; his visit to 
Yerba Buena in June, 1846, 103, 
105-108; General Fremont on G.'s 
mission, 115, sqq. ; G. brings but one 
secret dispatch, 130-132 ; circum- 
stances of his commission, 145 ; con- 
duct of, after the conquest, 187- 
189 ; at San Pascual, 192. 

Gold discovery, 220, 221j effects of, 
in general, summarizeC, -~ --., 222 ; 
effects of, immediate, 223 ; excite- 
ment caused by, described, 231-246. 

Gold-mining, lying reports concerning 
early, circulated, 231-234 ; history 
and social effects of, 271-376 ; meth- 
ods of, in 1848, 284-2S8, 290-292 ; 
methods of, in 1849, 300-302 ; meth- 
ods of, in later years, 308-313 ; av- 
erage returns of, 234, 360. See 
also Pan -mining, Cradle -mining, 
Sluice-mining, River-bed-mining. 

Golden Gate, 6, 10. 

Graham, Isaac, 28. 

Grey, Wm,, pseudonym, cited, 272, 
394. 

Grigsby, Captain, 70, 71, 83. 

Guimy Bags, Fort, 461, 462 

Gutierrez, Governor, 24. 

Gwin, W. M., in the constitutioneJ 
convention of 1849, 262, 269; as 
author of Land Act of 1851, 483- 
485 ; in general politics, 495, 496. 

Hale, Rev. Edward Everett, 9. 

Hall's " History of San Jose " cited, 
189, 223. 

Hallock, Capt. H. W., services of, 
in 1848, 49, 258, note ; in constitu- 
tional convention, 268. 

Haro, the brothers, 82. 

Hastings, L. W., 208-211. 

" Herald," the San Francisco, attitude 
of, concerning King's assassination, 
439. 

Hetherington, executed by Vigilance 
Committee, 464. 

Hi jar, colony of, 23, 24. 

Hittell, John S., on Bear Flag affair, 
cited, 95, 117. 

Hittell, J. S., " History of San Fran- 
cisco," cited, 117, 213, 214, 219, 3S0, 
383, 385, 423, 424, 427, 428, 429, 430, 
432, 438, 448, 458, 464. 

Hittell, J. S., "Resources of Cali- 
fornia," cited, 309. 

Hittell, Theodore, 95. 

Hopkins, wounded by Judge Terry, 
462. 

Horn, Cape, emigrants by, 240. 



" Hounds," affair of the, 263, 407, note. 
Howard, Volney E., as general of 

state niilitia, 461. 
Hull, Captain, 205. 
Humboldt River, 44. 
Hunt, Rev. T. Dwight, 401. 
Hurd, Cyrus, Jr., 333. 
Hyde, alcalde, 205. 

Ide, "Wm., character of , 67 ; narrative 
of, 68-78 ; referred to, 151 ; false 
proclamation received by, 97, 98, 
109. 

Indians, in mines, 291, 292 ; frequent 
massacres of, by early miners, 363. 

Interregnum, the, history of, 198- 
270 ; problems of, 198-213 ; San 
Francisco during, 213 - 220 ; gold 
discovery during, 220-224 ; new- 
comers during, 225-246 ; later con- 
stitutional history of, 246-257 ; end 
of, in constitutional convention, 257- 
270 ; men of, their character, 198 ; 
discontent of, 200-210 ; their con- 
servatism in 1849, 249 ; their posi- 
tion in the constitutional conven- 
tion, 261, 264, 269. 

Jackson, Mrs. H. H., cited, 188. 

Jackson, town of, lynching affair at, 
343. 

Jenkins, hanged by the first Vigi- 
lance Committee of San Francisco, 
420, 422. 

Jenny Lind Theatre, performance ad- 
vertised in, 387 ; burning of, 388 ; 
rebuilding of, 389 ; sale of, to the 
city, 389. 

Jesuits, expulsion of, from Lower 
California, 11. 

Johnson, governor of California, 497 ; 
abortive negotiations of, with the 
Vigilance Committee of 1856, 441- 
446. 

Johnson, Theodore T., cited, 304. 

Jones, E. P., 205. 

Jones, J. M., 262, 267. 

Jones, Thomas Ap Catesby, tem- 
porary seizure of California by, in 
1842, 37. 

Jones, Wm. Carey, 482, 483. 

"Jones and partners," tried for theft 
at Coloma, 319-321. 

Justice, administration of, in early 
days. See Popular justice. 

Kearny, Gen. S. W., instructions of, 
127 ; arrival of, in California, 191 ; 
at San Pascual, 192 ; with Stock- 
ton, 192, 195 ; quarrel with Stock- 
ton and Fremont, 196 ; authorizes 
sale of lots in San Francisco, 214. 



508 



INDEX. 



Kern River mines, excitement con- 
cerning, 431. 

King, James, "of "William," career 
of, 432-437 ; character of, 432, 433 ; 
founds the " Bulletin," 433 ; work 
of, 434, 435 ; discussion with the 
gamblers, 436, 437 ; shooting of, 438 ; 
popular excitement caused by the 
deed, 439; death of, 448; Edward 
McGowan on the assassination of, 
449, 450. 

King, James, "of William," cited, 
255. 

King, Thomas Butler, 268. 

King, Thomas S., as editor of the 
' ' Bulletin " after his brother's death, 
454. 

Klamath Lake Indians, 89. 

" Know-Nothing " party in California, 
496, 497. 

La Perouse, visit of, 17. 

Land Act of 1851, 483. See also Land 
titles. 

Land grants, early, 45, 46. 

Land titles, early difficulties con- 
cerning, 207, 210 ; during the gold 
period, 467, sqq. ; historical impor- 
tance of land question, 467, 468 ; 
dangers besetting the land titles in 
1849, 468, 469; land troubles at 
Sacramento in 1849-50, 469-479; 
doubts concerning Sutter's title, 
471 ; views of the squatters on 
Sutter's land, 472-476 ; squatter 
meeting in 1849 at Sacramento, 474, 
476 ; the Robinson squatter move- 
ment in 1850, 477-479 ; later phases 
of the land troubles, 480, sqq. ; 
classes of Californian land claims, 
480-482; Land Act of 1851, 483, 
484 ; proposed supplementary leg- 
islation, 484, 485 ; land litigation 
under act of 1851, 485-487 ; disas- 
trous consequences of land litiga- 
tion, 487-491 ; political failure of 
squatter party, 493, 494. 

Larkin, Thomas O., his position in 
California before 1846, 38-40 ; his 
correspondence cited, id. ; his char- 
acter and influence, 39 ; mentioned, 
95 ; relation to Gillespie, 103 ; not 
appealed to for information by 
Fremont in June, 1846, 103 ; cited, 
223, 260. — Instructions of, 135- 
138 ; consequent intrigues of, 161- 
165. See also Gillespie and Fremont. 

11 Law and Order " men, during the 
second Vigilance Committee of San 
Francisco, 446, 458, 459, 462, 463. 

Leese, Mr., 60. 

lAmantour claim, 482. 



Loker, ¥m. N., 97, 109. 

" Long Tom," 301, 308, 309. 

Los Angeles, pueblo of, founded in 

1781, 14. 
Lynch law. See Popular justice. 

McAllister, Mr. Hall, 412. 

McCarver, member of constitutional 
convention, 264, 269. 

McGlashan, C. F., his "History of 
the Donner Party " cited, 45. 

McGowan, Edward, his difficulties 
with the Vigilance Committee, 449, 
450 ; his "Narrative," id. 

McKenzie, hanged by the first Vigi- 
lance Committee of San Francisco, 
422. 

Mscnamara, 91, 92, 165, sqq. 

Macnamara scheme, 165-167. 

Macondray, Mr., 410. 

Manila ships, 11. 

Mariposa, troubles at, with foreign 
miners, 365. 

Marshall, as gold discoverer, 220, 221, 
223 ; engages in mining near Co- 
loma, 291. 

Marysville steamer, popular justice 
on a, 340. 

Mason, Colonel, as governor of Cali- 
fornia, 202, 211, 212 ; visits the 
mines, 223, 291 ; cited on methods 
of mining, 287. 

Meiggs, Henry, career of, 425-431. 

Mendocino, Cape, first seen by Fer- 
ralo, 9. 

Merritt, Captain, 59, 69, 71, 120. 

Mervine, Captain, 190. 

Methodists in San Francisco, 400, 
401. 

Mexican grants. See Land grants, 
and Land titles. 

Mexican rule in California, 19, sqq. ; 
begun in 1822, 19 ; periods of, 19, 
20 ; growth of, before 1830, 20, 21 ; 
secularization of missions begun by, 
22 ; events of, between 1830 and 
1846, 22-30. 

Mexican War, relation of, to California 
in the cabinet plans, 50-52, 84, 153, 
154, 156. 

Mexican War, end of, 224. 

" Mexicans " in the mines. See Foreign 
miners, and Califomians, native. 

Micheltorena, Governor, 28, 29 ; vis- 
ited at Los Angeles by Jones, 37. 

Miners' justice. See Popular justice. 

Mining camps, orderly formation of, 
in early days, 279, 283, 304, 305, 307 ; 
instability of, 285, 286 ; gradual de- 
generation of, 281, 282, 300, 336-340, 
375 ; reformation of, 374, 376 ; con- 
trast between northern and south- 



INDEX. 



509 



ern camps, 366 ; typical experiences 
of a mining camp in 1851-52, 344- 
356. See also Society, Gold min- 
ing, Popular justice, Foreign min- 
ers, and Americans in California. 

Mission property, title to, 481. 

Missions (see also Franciscans), sta- 
tistics of California, in 1780, 15 ; In- 
dians at, 16; failure of , 16 ; secular- 
ization of, 22, sqq. ; secularization 
proposed, 22 ; carried on further, 23- 
25 ; completed, 30. 

" Missions, Nor-thern," as name for 
California, 9. 

Mississippi Bar, thief cruelly flogged 
at, inTSSl, 334. 

Monterey, bay of, unrecognized by 
Portola in 1769, 14 ; Mission of San 
Carlos founded at, 14. 

Monterey, town of, seized by Com- 
modore Jones in 1842, 37. 

Montgomery, Captain, 83, 105 ; raises 
flag at Yerba Buena, 175. 

Montgomery Street, in San Francisco, 
381 

Moore, B. F., 262. 

Moquelumne Hill, lynching affair at, 
321-323 ; reflections on this affair, 
323, 324. 

Moquelumne, Lower Bar of, scene at, 
during the first state election, 306. 

"Mormon diggings," the, in 1848, 
289-291. 

Mormons in California, 197. 

Murphy, John M., 223. 

Nevada, thief flogged at, 340. 

"New Helvetia," Sutter's title to, 

470, 471. 
Nicaragua, 235. 
North and South, Americans from, 

mingled in California, 227-230. 

Oak Bottom, affair of Easterbrook 
and Price at, 329-332. 

Oakland, squatters at, 488. 

O'Meara, his " Broderick and Gwin " 
cited, 261, 495. 

Oregon, English claims upon, in con- 
nection with California affairs, 168- 
170. 

Osgood, Mr. E. S. , cited in connection 
with the affair of February, 1851, 
and in connection with the second 
Vigilance Committee, 414, 415, 442, 
445; his personal connection with 
these affairs, see id. 

Otter, the, of Boston, visit, 17. 

Overland emigrants, 240-246. 

Padres, 23. 

Page, Bacon & Co., failure of, 431. 



Palmerston, Lord, statement of, in 
Parliament, 170, 172, 173. 

Palou, his biography of Father Juni- 
pero Serra, 15. 

Pan-mining, 282-287. 

Panama, new-comers by, 235-240 ; first 
Americans at, 235-239. 

"Panama Star," 236, 238. _ 

Partnerships, mining, their close and 
social nature, 288 ; illustration of, 
in 1848, by the case of the Brooks 
party, 289, sqq. ; darker aspects of, 
300; degree of universality of, in 
1849, 301, 302 ; case of a fatal diffi- 
culty between partners, 329-332. 

Payran, Stephen, 419, 420. 

Penjdeh incident, mentioned for com- 
parison, 53, 119. 

Peruvians on the way to California, 
236-239. See also Foreign miners. 

Pickett, C. E., 205. 

Pio Pico, Governor, 29 ; controversy 
with Castro, 94, 96, 107 ; legend con- 
cerning, 173 ; meeting with Castro, 
175 ; flight to Mexico, 180. 

Plaza, the, in San Francisco, 388, 389, 
392, 420. 

Polk, President James K. See Cabi' 
net of Polk. 

Polk cabinet. See Cabinet of Polk. 

Popular justice, crises of, general re- 
marks on, 277, 279-282, 421, 465 ; in 
the mines, in the earlier and more 
orderly camps, 279, 300, 302, 304, 
305, 307 ; in 1851 and the subsequent 
years : general remarks on, 313-317 ; 
Mr. Shinn's view of the topic, 314, 
315 ; strictures on his view, 316 ; il- 
lustrations of the spirit of miners' 
justice in 1851 and 1852, 317-324; 
unsentimental character of the min- 
ers' justice, 327, 328 ; misrepresenta- 
tions current on this point, 326 ; il- 
lustrations of popular justice : at 
Shasta in 1851, 329-333; at John- 
son's Bar in 1852, 333, 334 ; cruelty 
of the miners on occasion, 334 ; the 
morality of the penalties inflicted 
by the miners, 335-337 ; inefficacy 
of this popular justice, 33S-344 ; 
scenes of popular justice, as known 
to "Shirley," 351, 354, 355, 356; 
miners' justice, as applied to for- 
eigners in 1850, 361-364 ; the same 
topic in later years, 368 ; disgrace- 
ful lynching of a woman in 1851, 
368-374; relation of lynch law to 
the final attainment of order in the 
mines, 375 ; in San Francisco : con- 
trast between the condition of San 
Francisco and that of the mines as 
to popular justice, 407 ; the affair of 



510 



INDEX. 



the Hounds in 1849, 407, note ; the 
outbreak of February, 1851, 407- 
417 ; its causes, 408 ; scenes of Feb- 
ruary 22d, 409, 410; the popular 
trial of February 23d, 411-416 ; tran- 
sition to the first of the great Vigi- 
lance Committees, 417 ; origin of the 
committee, 418-420 ; work of the 
committee, 420-422 ; the crisis of 
May, 1856, 437, sqq. ; popular feel- 
ing upon King's death, 439 ; origin 
of the second great Vigilance Com- 
mittee, 440-447 ; negotiations with 
Governor Johnson, 441-446 ; seizure 
of Casey and Cora by the commit- 
tee, 447 ; trial and execution of 
Casey and Cora, 451, 452 ; general 
dangers and duties of the commit- 
tee, 453 ; its temptations from the 
side of its friends, 454, 455 ; its po- 
litical temptations, 455 - 457 ; its 
prisoners, 457 ; its enemies and their 
efforts, 458-462 ; its arrest and re- 
lease of Terry, 462, 463 ; its execu- 
tion of Brace and Hetherington, and 
its concluding acts, 464. 

Portola, Governor, 13. 

Presbyterians in San Francisco, 401. 

Price, a miner, killed by his partner, 
Easterbrook, at Oak Bottom in 1851, 
329, 330. 

Prudon, M., 60. 

Pueblos in California, foundation and 
intention of, 14, 15. 

Rancheros. See Calif omians, native. 

Reed, juror at the Downieville lynch- 
ing of July 5, 1851, 373. 

Revere, Lieutenant, cited, 173, 190. 

Reyes, Point, 10. 

Rezanof, visit of, to San Francisco, 
17. 

Richardson, General, TL S. marshal, 
shot by Cora in San Francisco, 447. 

Riley, General, 205; cited, 238; ad- 
ministration of, and views of polit- 
ical situation, 246-255 ; calls consti- 
tutional convention, 257 ; surren- 
ders government, 270. 

River-bed-mining, 310-312. 

Robinson, Alfred, his "Life in Cali- 
fornia " cited, 38. 

Robinson, Dr. Charles, as squatter 
leader in 1S50, 477-479. 

Robinson, Mr. H., cited, 369. 

Roop, Isaac, at Oak Bottom and Shas- 
ta, 329, 332, 333. 

Rough and Ready, opposition to for- 
eign miners at, 367. 

Routes to California, 234-246. 

Royce, Mrs. S. E. , statement of, cited, 
241-246, 403-406. 



Russians, first visit of, in California, 
17 ; colony of, at Ross, 18. 

Sacramento, land troubles at, in 1849- 
50, 409-479 ; attempts at popular 
government in, in 1849, 257. 

Sacramento Valley, 4. 

San Carlos, Mission of, founded in 
1770, 14. 

San Diego Harbor, visited by Viz- 
caino, 11. 

San Diego, Mission of, settled 1769, 13. 

San Francisco, Bay of, not known to 
Drake, 10 ; name of, first applied to 
bay south of Point Reyes by Cerme- 
non, 10 ; name of, coincidence with 
Drake's given name, 11 ; entered by 
Ayala, 14 ; the present bay discov- 
ered, name applied as at present, 
14 ; appearance in 1849, 380. 

San Francisco, city of, beginnings, 46, 
47 ; during the interregnum, 213- 
220 ; remarks on its situation and 
plan, 214-219 ; in 1849, 246 ; at- 
tempts at popular government in, 
in 1849, 257 ; social importance of, 
377 ; external changes of, between 

1848 and 1851, 378-391 ; appearance 
of, in 1849, 378-3S2 ; rents in, during 
1849, 379, 380-382 ; hotels of, in 1849, 
379, 380 ; begins to fill Yerba Buena 
Cove, 381, note ; early fires of, in 

1849 and 1850, 382, 383 ; commerce 
of, in 1849-50, 383, 384 ; fire of May 
4, 1851, 385, 386 ; fire of June 22, 
1851, 387-389; rebuilding of the 
city, 3S9, 390 ; use of wooden build- 
ings in the city, 390 ; scenes in the 
city in 1851, 390, 391 ; social life of 
the city in the early days, unhealthy 
sides of, 391-398 ; exaggerated ac- 
counts of, in the " Annals, " summa- 
rized and criticised, 393-398 ; women 
in San Francisco, life of, as falsely 
and as truly reported, 394, 395, 398, 
399, 403-407, 434, 435 ; churches in 
the city, 395, 398, 400-403 ; popula- 
tion of the city in early years as 
compared with that of State, 399 ; 
families in the city, life of, 403-407, 
434, 435 ; popular justice at, in Feb- 
ruary, 1851, 407-417 ; first Vigilance 
Committee at, 417-422; history of 
the city between 1851 and 1856, 
422-437 ; the crisis of 1856 and the 
second Vigilance Committee, 437- 
465 ; debt of the city, 386, 431 ; 
partial repudiation of the debt, 432 ; 
title to its lands, 482. 

San Francisco, Mission of, founded 

1776, 14. 
San Gabriel River, fight at, 192, 193. 



INDEX. 



511 



San Joaquin River, discovered, 14. 

San Joaquin Valley, 4. 

San Jose, pueblo of, founded in 1777, 
14. 

San Mateo Co., 383. 

San Pascual, fight at, 188, 192. 

San Pedro, fight near, 188, 190. 

San Rafael, 82. 

Santa Barbara, region of, first visited 
by Cabrillo, 9. 

Schools in San Francisco, 219, 399. 

Scudder, H. E., cited, 304. 

Secularization of missions proposed 
by Echeandia, 22 ; further progress 
of, 23-25 ; completion of, 30. 

Semple, Dr., 101, 151 ; character of, 
62 ; his part in and descriptions of 
the Bear Flag affair, 63-66, 69, 70 ; 
his part in the constitutional con- 
vention, 264, 268, 269. 

Serra, Junipero, 13 ; character of, 15. 

Settlers' party, 430 ; later political 
failure of, 493. 

Seymour, Admiral, conduct and in- 
structions of, discussed, 167-172. 

Shasta, popular justice at, in 1851, 
329-333. 

Shattuck,' Judge, 412, 413. 

Shaw, Pringle, his " Ramblings in Cal- 
ifornia" cited, 367. 

Sherman, W. T., cited, 202, 203, 441, 
443, 452, 459 ; as opponent of Vigi- 
lance Committee, 441, 458, 459-461 ; 
at the interview between Governor 
Johnson and Vigilance Committee 
members, 442-444 ; as general of 
state militia, 460. 

Shinn, Charles H., cited, 273, 279, 286, 
296, 300, 314-316, 337, 340. 

Shinn, Miss M. W., 99. 

" Shirley," letters of, on the mining- 
life, 283, 344-356 ; character of these 
letters in general, 344, 345 and note ; 
early experiences of "Shirley" at 
Rich Bar, 345-319 ; later experiences 
at Indian Bar, 349-356 ; the author's 
real name, 345 ; her furniture and 
library in the mines, 350. 

Sierra Nevada Mountains, 4, 5. 

Simpson, H. I., fictitious author of 
forged pamphlet, 231-233. 

Sinclair, 223. 

Sitka, 17. 

Slidell, mission of, to Mexico in 1845, 
152, 153 and note. 

Sloat, Commodore, 82 ; instructions 
of, 84, 85, 125-128 ; conduct of, dur- 
ing the conquest, 157-162, 175-177 ; 
proclamation of, contrasted with 
Stockton's, 181, 182; effects of his 
proclamation as remembered after 
conquest, 202. 



Sluice-mining, invention of, 308 ; early 
description of, 308, 309 ; social im- 
portance of the invention, 309, 310. 

Smith, Jedediah S., 35. 

Smith, Gen. Persifer F., at Panama, 
237, 238 ; relieves the emigrants of 
1849, 244. 

Society, state of, among the natives 
before the conquest, 30-36 ; among 
American residents before the con- 
quest, 38^1 ; among the men of the 
interregnum generally, 198-213 ; at 
San Francisco in 1848, 219 ; among 
the new-comers in general, 225-234 ; 
among the new-comers on the way, 
234-246 ; forces generally affecting 
it during early days, 272-278 ; forces 
affecting it in the mines in particu- 
lar, 278-282 ; pan and cradle min- 
ing as social influences, 282-288 ; Dr. 
J. T. Brooks, as witness on the min- 
ing society of 1848, 289-301 ; society 
at the Mormon diggings in the early 
summer of 1848, 290, 291 ; at various 
camps, later in 1848, 293-298 ; soci- 
ety in 1849 in the mines, 303-307 ; as 
affected by later forms of mining 
industry, 309-313; as shown by 
lynch law in the years after 1850 in 
the mines, 317-324, 327-334; sins of 
society in the mines, 336 ; corrupt 
state of, as induced by the lynching 
habit in the summer of 1852, 342, 
343 ; " Shirley's " account of a typi- 
cal mining society, 344-356 ; mining 
society, as affected by foreigners 
and by the popular feeling towards 
them, 356-374 ; improvement of so- 
ciety in later mining towns, 374- 
376 ; reflections on this improve- 
ment, 375, 376 ; society in San Fran- 
cisco in early days, as affected by 
over-work and over-excitement, 391- 
398 ; conservative social forces in 
San Francisco, 398-407 ; social cor- 
ruption during the business depres- 
sion of 1854-55, 424-432 ; reawak- 
ening of social conscience hi San 
Francisco, 432-438 ; social condi- 
tion, as affected by the second Vig- 
ilance Committee, 453, 462, 465; 
general social condition of the State, 
as affected by the land litigation, 
486-491 ; concluding reflections on 
the social history of California, 499- 
501. See also Popular justice, 
Americans in California, and Cali- 
fornians, native. 

Sola, Governor, 19. 

Solis, revolt of, 21. 

Sonoma, taken possession of by the 
Bear Flag men, 60 ; life of the Bear 



512 



INDEX. 



Flag men at, 60-79; attempts at 
popular government in, in 1849, 257. 

Sonora, city of, difficulties with the 
foreign miners at, in 1850, 360-364 ; 
thief flogged at, 340. 

Sonoran miners, attempted expulsion 
of, in 1849, 305, 35S. See also For- 
eign miners. 

South. See North and South. 

Spanish rule in California, 11-19 ; end 
of, in 1822, 19. 

" Squire," the, at Indian Bar in 1S51- 
52, as known to " Shirley," 350, 355, 
356. 

Statistics, brief and very general, of 
State and of San Francisco, 398, 
399. 

Stevenson's regiment, 191, 197, 231. 

Stillmaii, Dr., his " Seeking the Golden 
Fleece " cited, 235. 

Stockton, Commodore, 133 ; at Mon- 
terey, 177 ; proclamation of, 178 ; 
Tuthill's criticism of the procla- 
mation, id. ; sails for San Pedro, 
179 ; enters Los Angeles, 180 ; sec- 
ond proclamation of, 180-183; 
speech of, on receiving news of the 
revolt, 190 ; campaign of, in the 
south against the revolters, 190- 
193 ; quarrel of, with Kearny, 195- 
197 ; relation of his conduct to sub- 
sequent politics in California, 203, 
204, 250. 

Stockton, disorder and justice at, in 
1851, 341, 342; meeting at, to op- 
pose Foreign Miners' Tax, 360, note. 

Stuart, the supposed, tried, 409-416 ; 
saved by the first Vigilance Com- 
mittee, 422 ; the real Stuart, hanged 
by the first Vigilance Committee, 
421. 

Sullivan, "Yankee," dies in Vigilance 
Committee rooms, 457. 

Sutter, J. A., his fort and settle- 
ment, 40 ; his character and posi- 
tion, 41 ; settlers with, 42 ; men- 
tioned, 223^ his title to New Hel- 
vetia questioned by squatters, 470- 
473. 
Sutter's Fort, state of feeling at, in 
1846, 101, 107. 

Talbot, Lieutenant, 190. 

Taylor, Bayard, his "El Dorado" 
cited, 240, 261, 303-305, 358, 359, 
379, 380. 

Taylor, President, administration of, 
its influence in constitutional con- 
vention of 1849, 268. 

Taylor, "William ("Father"), cited, 
393, 400, 401. 

Tehauntepec, 235. 



Terry, Judge, as opponent of Vigi- 
lance Committee, 460 ; affray with 
Hopkins, 462 ; confinement and 
trial by Vigilance Committee, 463 ; 
release, 464 ; kills Broderick, 496. 

Thayer, Mr., protests unavailingly 
against the Downieville lynching of 
July 5, 1851, 371. 

Thornton, J. G., his " Oregon and 
California " cited, 43, 45. 

Torre, Joaquin de la, 78, 79. 

Traders, American, in California be- 
fore the conquest, 31, 34, 38-40. 

Trappers, American, in California, 35, 
36, 40. 

Treaty of peace proclaimed in Califor- 
nia, 224. 

Truckee Cafion, 44. 

Tuthill, " History of California," cited, 
178, 179, 189, 223, 399, 458. 

Vallejo, General, 28, 33 ; imprison- 
ment of, by Bear Flag men, GO, sqq. ; 
behavior of, towards Bear Flag 
men, 69, 70 ; legend concerning his 
connection with a meeting at Mon- 
terey, 173. 

Vallejo, Salvador, 60. 

Vancouver, visit of, 17. 

Van Ness, mayor of San Francisco, 
441. 

Ver Mehr, Rev. Dr., 401. 

Victoria, Manuel, Governor, 22. 

Vigilance Committee of Sam Francisco, 
first, 417-422 ; second, 1, 437-465. 
For further references, see imder 
Popular justice. 

Vigilance Committees. See under Pop- 
ular justice, especially under Pop- 
ular justice in San Francisco. 

Vizcaino, early voyage of, 11. 

Washington Guards, the, 409. 

Watson, Mr. R. S., cited concerning 
the affair of February, 1851, and 
concerning the first Vigilance Com- 
mittee, 412, 413, 415, 418, 419, 420 ; 
his personal connection with these 
matters, see id. 

Weber's Creek, 291. 

Weller, JohnB., 494. 

Wheeler, Rev. O. C, 401. 

Whittaker, hanged by the first Vigi- 
lance Committee of San Francisco, 
422. 

Wierzbicki, F. P., his "California" 
(pamphlet) cited, 301, 302, 311, 378, 
379. 

Willey, Rev. Mr., cited, 99, 236, 238, 
258. 

Williams, Rev. Albert, 401, 402, 403. 

Women in California in early days; 



INDEX. 



513 



native Californian women before 
the conquest, their character, 32 ; 
women at Yerba Buena in 1847, 
214 ; among the new - comers in 
1849, 231, 241-246 ; at the Mormon 
diggings in 1S48, 290, 291 ; in the 
mines in the later summer of 1848, 
297 ; women among a company ex- 
pelled from Shasta in 1851, 333 ; 
treatment of women in the mines 
generally in early days, 34G ; " Shir- 
ley's " experiences as to the women 
in the mines, 345, 346, 347, 348, 
354 ; a woman hanged at Dovvnie- 
ville in 1851, 368-374 ; influence of 
women for the final triumph of 
good order in the mines, 374 ; wo- 
men in San Francisco, 378 ; charac- 
ter of, according to the "Annals," 

33 



394, 395, 397, 398 ; true character 
of, 399, 400 ; family life of, in early 
days, 403-407 ; evils of their posi- 
tion in San Francisco in 1855, 434, 
435. 

Woodruff, juror at the Downieville 
lynching of July 5, 1851, 373. 

Woodworth, S. E., 419. 

Wool, General, 459. 

" World Encompassed " cited, 10. 

Yerba Buena, and Yerba Buena Cove. 

See also under San Francisco, city 

of. 
Yerba Buena, Gillespie at, 106, 108 ; 

state of feelings at, in June, 1846, 

106. 

Zabriskie, 475. 



EDITED BY 

HORACE E. SCUDDER. 



A series of volumes narrating the history of such 
States of the Union as have exerted a positive influ- 
ence in the shaping of the national government, or 
have a striking political, social, or economical history. 

The commonwealth has always been a positive force 
in American history, and it is believed that no better 
time could be found for a statement of the life inher- 
ent in the States than when the unity of the nation 
has been assured ; and it is hoped by this means to 
throw new light upon the development of the country, 
and to give a fresh point of view for the study of 
American history. 

This series is under the editorial care of Mr. Hor- 
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of American history and as a writer. 

The aim of the Editor will be to secure trustworthy 
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style with the series of " American Statesmen " and 
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maps, indexes, and such brief critical apparatus as 
add to the thoroughness of the work. 

Speaking of the series, the Boston Journal says: 
" It is clear that this series will occupy an entirely new 
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tent and aptly chosen authors, from fresh materials^ 
in convenient form, and with a due regard to propor- 
tion and proper emphasis, they promise to supply 
most satisfactorily a positive want." 



The series, so far as arranged, comprises the follow- 
ing volumes : — 

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Professor of Palaeontology, Harvard University, re- 
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A capital example of what a short State history should be. — 
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"MICHIGAN." 

An ably written and charmingly interesting volume. . . . For 
variety of incident, for transitions in experience, for importance 
of events, and for brilliancy and ability in the service of the lead- 
ing actors, the history of Michigan offers rare attractions ; and 
the writer of it has brought to his task the most excellent gifts 
and powers as a vigorous, impartial, and thoroughly accomplished 
historian.— Christian Register (Boston). 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO., Publishers, 
Boston and New York. 



American Statesmen. 

A Series of Biographies of Men conspicuous in the 
Political History of the United States. 

EDITED BY 

JOHN T. MORSE, Jr. 



The object of this series is not merely to give a 
number of unconnected narratives of men in Ameri- 
can political life, but to produce books which shall, 
when taken together, indicate the lines of political 
thought and development in American history, — = 
books embodying in compact form the result of ex- 
tensive study of the many and diverse influences 
which have combined to shape the political history of 
our country. 

The series is under the editorship of Mr. John T. 
Morse, Jr., whose historical and biographical writings 
give ample assurance of his special fitness for this 
task. The volumes now ready are as follows : — 

John Quincy Adams. By John T. Morse, Jr. 
Alexander Hamilton. By Henry Cabot Lodge, 
John C. Calhoun. By Dr. H, von Holst. 
Andrew Jackson. By Prof. W. G. Sumner. 
John Randolph. By Henry Adams. 
James Monroe. By Pres. Daniel C. Gilman, 
Thomas Jefferson. By John T. Morse, Jr. 
Daniel Webster. By Henry Cabot Lodge. 
Albert Gallatin. By John Austin Stevens. 
James Madison. By Sydney Howard Gay 
John Adams. By John T. Morse, Jr. 
John Marshall. By A. B. Magruder. 
Samuel Adams. By James K. Hosmer. 

IN PREPARATION. 
Henry Clay. By Hon. Carl Schurz. 
Martin Van Buren. By Hon. Wm. Dorsheimer. 

Others to be announced hereafter. Each biography 
occupies a single volume, i6mo, gilt top. Price $1.25. 



ESTIMATES OF THE PRESS. 



"JOHN QUINCY ADAMS." 

That Mr. Morse's conclusions will in the main be those of 
posterity we have very little doubt, and he has set an admirable 
example to his coadjutors in respect of interesting narrative, 
just proportion, and judicial candor. — New York Evening 
Post. 

Mr. Morse has written closely, compactly, intelligently, fear- 
lessly, honestly. — New York Times. 



"ALEXANDER HAMILTON." 

The biography of Mr. Lodge is calm and dignified through- 
out. He has the virtue — rare indeed among biographers — ■ 
of impartiality. He has done his work with conscientious care, 
and the biography of Hamilton is a book which cannot have 
too many readers. It is more than a biography ; it is a study 
in the science of government. — St. Paul Pioneer-Press. 



"JOHN C. CALHOUN." 

Nothing can exceed the skill with which the political career 
of the great South Carolinian is portrayed in these pages. The 
work is superior to any other number of the series thus far, and 
we do not think it can be surpassed by any of those that are to 
come. The whole discussion in relation to Calhoun's position 
is eminently philosophical and just. — The Dial (Chicago). 



"ANDREW JACKSON." 

Prof. Sumner has, ... all in all, made the justest long esti- 
mate of Jackson that has had itself put between the covers of a 
book. — New York Times. 

One of the most masterly monographs that we have ever had 
the pleasure of reading. It is calm and clear. — Providence 
Journal. 



"JOHN RANDOLPH." 

The book has been to me intensely interesting. ... It is 
rich in new facts and side lights, and is worthy of its place in 
the already brilliant series of monographs on American States- 
men. — Prof. Moses Coit Tyler. 

Remarkably interesting. . . . The biography has all the ele- 
ments of popularity, and cannot fail to be widely read. — Hart- 
ford Courant. 

"JAMES MONROE." 

In clearness of style, and in all points of literary workman- 
ship, from cover to cover, the volume is well-nigh perfect. 
There is also a calmness of judgment, a correctness of taste, 
and an absence of partisanship which are too frequently want- 
ing in biographies, and especially in political biographies. — 
American Literary Churchman (Baltimore). 

The most readable of all the lives that have ever been written 
of the great jurist. — San Francisco Bulletin. 



"THOMAS JEFFERSON." 

The book is exceedingly interesting and readable. The at- 
tention of the reader is strongly seized at once, and he is carried 
along in spite of himself, sometimes protesting, sometimes 
doubting, yet unable to lay the book down. — Chicago Standard. 

The requirements of political biography have rarely been 
met so satisfactorily as in this memoir of Jefferson. — Boston 
journal. 



"DANIEL WEBSTER." 

It will be read by students of history ; it will be invaluable as 
a work of reference ; it will be an authority as regards matters 
of fact and criticism ; it hits the key-note of Webster's durable 
and ever-growing fame ; it is adequate, calm, impartial ; it is ad- 
mirable. — Philadelphia Press. 

The task has been achieved ably, admirably, and faithfully. — • 
Boston Transcript. 



"ALBERT GALLATIN." 

It is one of the most carefully prepared of these very valu- 
able volumes, . . . abounding in information not so readily ac- 
cessible as is that pertaining to men more often treated by the 
biographer. . . . The whole work covers a ground which the 
political student cannot afford to neglect. — Boston Correspond 
dent Hartford Courani. 

Frank, simple, and straightforward. — New York Tribune. 

"JAMES MADISON." 

The execution of the work deserves the highest praise. It is 
very readable, in a bright and vigorous style, and is marked by 
unity and consecutiveness of plan. — The Nation (New York). 

An able book. . . . Mr. Gay writes with an eye single to truth. 
«= The Critic (New York). 



"JOHN ADAMS." 

A good piece of literary work. ... It covers the ground 
thoroughly, and gives just the sort of simple and succinct ac- 
count that is wanted. — Evening Post (New York). 

A model of condensation and selection, as well as of graphic 
portraiture and clear and interesting historical narrative. — 
Christian Intelligencer (New York). 



"JOHN MARSHALL." 

Well done, with simplicity, clearness, precision, and judg- 
ment, and in a spirit of moderation and equity. A valuable ad- 
dition to the series. — New York Tribune. 



"SAMUEL ADAMS." 

Thoroughly appreciative and sympathetic, yet fair and criti- 
cal. . . . This biography is a piece of good work — a clear and 
simple presentation of a nobl'e man and pure patriot; it is 
written in a spirit of candor and humanity. — Worcester Spy. 

A brilliant and enthusiastic book, which it will do every 
American much good to read. — The Beacon (Boston). 

#*# For sale by all booksellers. Sent, post-paid, on re- 
ceipt of price by the Publishers, 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY, 

Boston and New York. 

% 



EDITED BY 

CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. 



A series of biographies of distinguished American 
authors, having all the special interest of biography, 
and the larger interest and value of illustrating the 
different phases of American literature, the social, 
political, and moral influences which have moulded 
these authors and the generations to which they be- 
longed. 

This series when completed will form an admi- 
rable survey of all that is important and of historical 
influence in American literature, and will itself be a 
creditable representation of the literary and critical 
ability of America to-day. 



Washington Irving. By Charles Dudley Warner. 
Noah Webster. By Horace E. Scudder. 
Henry D. Thoreau. By Frank B. Sanborn. 
George Ripley. By Octavius Brooks Frothingham. 
J. Feni?nore Cooper. By Prof. T. R. Lounsbury. 
Margaret Fuller Ossoli. By T. W. Higginson. 
Ralph Waldo Emerson. By Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
Edgar Allan Poe. By George E. Woodberry. 
Nathaniel Parker Willis. By Henry A. Beers. 

IN PREPARA TION 

Nathaniel Hawthorne. By James Russell Lowell. 
William Cullen Bryant. By John Bigelow. 
Bayard Taylor. By J. R. G. Hassard. 
William Gilmore Simms. By George W. Cable. 
Benjamin Franklin. By John Bach McMaster. 

Others to be announced hereafter. 

Each volume, with Portrait, i6mo, gilt top, $1.25, 



"WASHINGTON IRVING." 
Mr. Warner has not only written with sympathy, ml. 
nute knowledge of his subject, fine literary taste, and that 
easy, fascinating style which always puts him on such 
good terms with his readers, but he has shown a tact, 
critical sagacity, and sense of proportion full of promise 
for the rest of the series which is to pass under his 
supervision. — New York Tribune. 

It is a very charming piece of literary work, and pre- 
sents the reader with an excellent picture of Irving as a 
man and of his methods as an author, together with an 
accurate and discriminating characterization of his works. 
■= — Boston Journal. 

It would hardly be possible to produce a fairer or more 
candid book of its kind. — Literary World (London). 



"NOAH WEBSTER." 
Mr. Scudder's biography of Webster is alike honorable 
to himself and its subject. Finely discriminating in all 
that relates to personal and intellectual character, schol- 
arly and ju>t in its literary criticisms, analyses, and 
estimates, it is besides so kindly and manly in its tone, its 
narrative is so spirited and enthralling, its descriptions 
are so quaintly graphic, so varied and cheerful in their 
coloring, and its pictures so teem with the bustle, the 
movement, and the activities of the real life of a by-gone 
but most interesting age, that the attention of the reader 
is never tempted to wander, and he lays down the book 
with a sigh of regret for its brevity. — Harper's Monthly 
Magazi?ie. 

It fills completely its place in the purpose of this se- 
ries of volumes. — The Critic (New York). 

"HENRY D. THOREAU." 
Mr. Sanborn's book is thoroughly American and truly 
fascinating. Its literary skill is exceptionally good, and 
there is a racy flavor in its pages and an amount of exact 
knowledge of interesting people that one seldom meets 
with in current literature. Mr. Sanborn has done Tho- 
reau's genius an imperishable service. — America7i Church 
Review (New York). 

Mr. Sanborn has written a careful book about a curious 
man, whom he has studied as impartially as possible ; 
whom he admires warmly but with discretion ; and the 
story of whose life he has told with commendable frank- 
ness and simplicity. — New York Mail and Express. 

It is undoubtedly the best life of Thoreau extant.—* 
Christian Advocate (New York). 



"GEORGE RIPLEY." 

Mr. Frothingham's memoir is a calm and thoughtful 
and tender tribute. It is marked by rare discrimination, 
and good taste and simplicity. The biographer keeps 
himself in the background, and lets his subject speak. 
And the result is one of the best examples of personal 
portraiture that we have met with in a long time. — The 
Churchman (New York). 

He has fulfilled his responsible task with admirable 
fidelity, frank earnestness, justice, fine feeling, balanced 
moderation, delicate taste, and finished literary skill. It 
is a beautiful tribute to the high-bred scholar and gener- 
ous-hearted man, whose friend he has so worthily por- 
trayed. — Rev. William H. Channing (London). 



"JAMES FENIMORE COOPER." 

We have here a model biography. The book is charm- 
ingly written, with a felicity and vigor of diction that are 
notable, and with a humor sparkling, racy, and never 
obtrusive. The story of the life will have something of 
the fascination of one of the author's own romances. — 
New York Tribune. 

Prof. Lounsbury's book is an admirable specimen of 
literary biography. . . . We can recall no recent addition 
to American biography in any department which is supe- 
rior to it. It gives the reader not merely a full account 
of Cooper's literary career, but there is mingled with this 
a sufficient account of the man himself apart from his 
books, and of the period in which he lived, to keep 
alive the interest from the first word to the last. — New 
York Evening Post. 

"MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI." 
Here at last we have a biography of one of the noblest 
and the most intellectual of American women, which does 
full justice to its subject. The author has had ample 
material for his work, — all the material now available, 
perhaps, — and has shown the skill of a master in his 
use of it. . . . It is a fresh view of the subject, and adds 
important information to that already given to the public. 
— Rev. Dr. F. H. Hedge, in Boston Advertiser. 

He has filled a gap in our literary history with excel- 
lent taste, with sound judgment, and with that literary 
skill which is preeminently his own. — Christian Union 
(New York). 

Mr. Higginson writes with both enthusiasm and sym- 
pathy, and makes a volume of surpassing interest. — 
Commercial Advertiser (New York). 



"RALPH WALDO EMERSON." 

A biography of Emerson by Holmes is a real event in 
American literature. . . . He has brought Emerson him' 
self so near, and painted him for us with a pencil so 
loving and yet so just, that it will remain with many of 
us a question which shall be hereafter most dear to us, 
the man whom the artist thus reveals, or the artist him- 
self. — Standard (Chicago). 

Dr. Holmes has written one of the most delightful 
biographies that has ever appeared. Every page sparkles 
with genius. His criticisms are trenchant, his analysis 
clear, his sense of proportion delicate, and his sympa- 
thies broad and deep. — Philadelphia Press. 



"EDGAR ALLAN POE." 

Mr. Woodberry has contrived with vast labor to con- 
struct what must hereafter be called the authoritative 
biography of Poe — a biography which corrects all others, 
supplements all others, and supersedes all others. — The 
Critic (New York). 

The best life of Poe that has yet been written, and no 
better, one is likely to be written hereafter. This is high 
praise, but it is deserved. Mr. Woodberry has spared no 
pains in exploring sources of information ; he has shown 
rare judgment and discretion in the interpretation of what 
he has found ; he has set forth everything frankly and 
fairly ; and he has brought to bear upon the critical part 
of his work a keen instinct, a well-informed mind, a sound 
judgment, and the utmost catholicity of spirit. — Co7nmer- 
cial Advertiser (New York). 



"NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS." 

Prof. Beers has done his work sympathetically yet can- 
didly and fairly and in a philosophic manner, indicating 
the status occupied by Willis in the republic of letters, 
and sketching graphically his literary environment and 
the main springs of his success. It is one of the best 
books of an excellent series. — Buffalo Times. 

The work is sober, frank, honest, trustworthy, and em- 
inently readable. — The Beacon (Boston). 

A delightful biographical study. — Brooklyn Union. 

*#* For sale by all Booksellers. Sent, post-paid, on receipt 
of price by the Publishers, 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY, 

BOSTON AND NEW YORK. 



